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By Mike Hanna in Asia on January 24th, 2010
Photo by AFP

The campaigning is now officially over in Sri Lanka. Election regulations stipulate a so-called quiet time before Tuesday's election in which voters can ponder their choice free of political distraction.

But in this supposed period of silence, the debate continues to be intense. The election has caught the imagination of the country’s people like few have before.

There is a discernible excitement; and an apparent national awareness that the race is too close to call.

It wouldn’t have appeared to be that way when the election was called on the 23rd November last year. At the time, President Mahinda Rajapaksa was effectively running in a one-horse race. The war that had lasted nearly three decades was over and he was riding a surge of popular support as a result.

By Wayne Hay in Asia on January 21st, 2010
Photo by AFP

This would have to be one of the more intriguing presidential elections the world has ever witnessed. The two leading candidates for the top office in Sri Lanka are the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and the retired army General, Sarath Fonseka.

The election on January 26 will be the first since the end of the civil war in May 2009, when the Rajapaksa government overcame the rebel Tamil Tigers who'd been fighting for an independent state for 26 years.

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