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Sri Lanka’s voters go to the polls next Tuesday 26 January in elections that were called almost two years early by the country’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. They are almost evenly divided between supporters of the president and his main opponent, former army chief Sarath Fonseka.

Both the president and his opponent are claiming to be national heroes after last year’s victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers in the country’s decades-long war. The Tamils of the north and east are eagerly courted by both sides in the race, and presidential politics have arguably speeded up the government’s dismantling of the remaining displacement camps, set up to house and screen the hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians displaced by the civil war.

The Tamil Tigers were fighting for a separate homeland, arguing that Tamils suffered discrimination and neglect at the hands of the majority Sinhalese.

Links to other sites: AFP, Al-Jazeera, Sri Lanka Guardian