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The 2010 Sri Lankan parliamentary election was held on April 8 and April 20, 2010, to elect 225 members to Sri Lanka's 14th Parliament. 14,088,500 Sri Lankans were eligible to vote in the election at 11,102 polling stations. It was the first general election held in Sri Lanka following the conclusion of the 30-year-long civil war. The main parties contesting in the election were the party of Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapakse, the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), the main opposition United National Front (UNF) and the Democratic National Alliance (DNA) of Sarath Fonseka. President Rajapakse was previously reelected as president in January 2010. As expected, the UPFA secured a landslide victory in the elections, buoyed by its achievement of ending the 30 year Sri Lankan Civil War by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in May 2009. The UPFA won a large majority in the house, obtaining 144 seats, an increase of 39 since the 2004 election. The main opposition UNF is won 60 seats, a decline of 22. The minority Tamil party Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won 14 seats, down from the 22 they won in 2004, and the DNA, contesting for the first time, won 7 seats.〔 〕 The UPFA however fell short of its goal of obtaining a two-thirds supermajority in the house, which it would have needed to change the constitution on its own. The election saw the lowest voter turnout since independence. While the election was initially scheduled to be concluded on April 8, irregularities in two districts led the Commissioner of Elections to hold re-polls on April 20. Final results were announced on the 21st, a day before the new parliament is scheduled to meet for the very first time. ==Background== General elections are usually held every six years in Sri Lanka, to elect 225 members to the Parliament of Sri Lanka. The country is divided into 22 electoral districts, and each district is assigned a specific number of seats depending on the districts population, with 196 seats distributed among the districts. At the election, parties contesting in a given district are awarded a certain number of seats available from the district based on the number of votes obtained in the whole district. The remaining 29 seats are distributed amongst the contesting political parties based on the percentage of the national vote received by each party. The previous parliamentary election was held on April 2, 2004. The newly formed UPFA alliance became the largest group in Parliament by winning 105 of the 225 seats, allowing it to form a minority government with the support of the sole Eelam People's Democratic Party MP. On April 6, 2004, President Chandrika Kumaratunga appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa, the leader of the UPFA, as the new Prime Minister. The rest of the government were sworn in on April 10, 2004. The new parliament was sworn in on April 22, 2004. Since then a number of defections and counter-defections from the opposition have increased the number of government MPs to 129, most of whom have been rewarded with ministerial posts: *9 August 2004: Three Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) MPs join UPFA. *3 September 2004: Ceylon Workers' Congress (eight MPs) joins UPFA, giving it a majority in parliament. *16 June 2005: Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) (39 MPs) quits UPFA. *25 January 2006: Four United National Party MPs join UPFA. *28 January 2007: 18 UNP MPs and 6 SLMC MPs join UPFA. *30 January 2007: Jathika Hela Urumaya (eight MPs) joins UPFA. *12 December 2007: Four SLMC MPs quit the UPFA. *28 December 2008: 12 MPs, who had left the JVP in May 2008 to form the National Freedom Front, join the UPFA. This has allowed the UPFA form a stable government for six years. Following the expiration of the second term of President Kumaratunge, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse defeated the leader of the United National Party and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe in the 2005 Presidential election. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by Ratnasiri Wickremanayake. Under Rajapakse, the Sri Lankan military defeated the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam group in May 2009, ending the 30 year Sri Lankan Civil War and significantly increasing Rajapaksa's popularity in the country. Rajapaksa rode this wave of popularity to win the 2010 Presidential election, defeating opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka by a large margin. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sri Lankan parliamentary election, 2010」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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