General Fonseka. Photo credit: Foto Rajith

As state-run Sir Lankan television reported that incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa won yesterday’s election, his challenger and former ally, General Sarath Fonseka, told Reuters that he was holed up in a five-star hotel, surrounded by heavily-armed commandoes.

While military spokesmen had no immediate comment on Fonseka’s charge, top military officials told Reuters that Fonseka was being watched on suspicion that he might attempt a coup, relying his own ties to the army he commanded just eight months ago. Fonseka told the news agency that he believe the government had a plan to take him and his supporters into custody.

The Sri Lankan Army denied that there was a plan to arrest the general, The Times reported. An Army spokesman told the paper that Fonseka was in the hotel with 400 of his supporters and that “their intentions were unclear.”

This election season has been an incredibly contentious one in Sri Lanka – former allies who led the won the fight against the Tamils after a desperate 25-year civil war, Rajapaksa and Fonseka turned on one another this year. The campaign trail has been marked with bitter recriminations and accusations of coup plots and election fraud from both camps, as well as hundred of incidences of physical violence. Over the two-month campaign season, five people were actually killed.

Fear of election-related violence prompted security officials to deploy 68,000 police officers to polling stations; aside from a few minor explosions, election day was relatively peaceful. Today, however, two people were killed and four injured after a grenade was lobbed into a Buddhist temple in the town of Gampola.

According to The Times, voter turnout was very low, around 20 percent, in the Tamil-dominated northern parts of the country, and high, at 80 percent, in the Sinhalese south.

The results of the election are not yet official, however, Rajapaksa is currently enjoying a healthy lead over Fonseka and his party has already begun celebrating his re-election with fireworks and flowers, the BBC reported.

According to Reuters, Sri Lanka’s first presidential election since last year’s defeat of the insurgent force, the Tamil Tigers, ended with the revelation that Fonseka was not a registered voter. The country’s Election Commission said that the fact he was not registered did render him ineligible to run for election, however, Rajapaksa’s coalition has said it will challenge Fonseka’s eligibility in court. Fonseka’s supporters told The New York Times that Fonseka’s name not being on the voter lists was an effort to derail his campaign, orchestrated by the incumbent party.