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| Turnout | 55.32%  25.74 pp | ||||||||||||||||
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 Winners of polling divisions. Premadasa in green, Bandaranaike in blue and Abeygunasekera in red. | |||||||||||||||||
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Presidential elections were held in Sri Lanka on 19 December 1988. Nominations were accepted on 10 November 1988 and electoral participation was 55.32%. Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa of the governing United National Party was elected, receiving 50.4% of all votes cast.
During the 1988 election, Sri Lanka was in chaos. In the north and east, soldiers of the Indian Peace Keeping Force battled Tamil Tiger rebels. In the south, government death squads engaged in deadly violence with equally brutal militants of the Sinhala-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Effective campaigning for both the government and opposition was barely possible.
Both major party candidates promised to abrogate the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord negotiated by outgoing UNP president J. R. Jayewardene and would ask Indian troops to leave the country.
Voting was not held in the LTTE-controlled areas of the north and east.
An indirect presidential election called 1993 Sri Lankan Presidential Elections held in the Parliament of Sri Lanka on May 7 1993 following the assassination of the Premadasa on May 1st 1993.
Aided by its control of the state-owned media, the UNP candidate, Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa, won a narrow but firm victory.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ranasinghe Premadasa | United National Party | 2,569,199 | 50.43 | |
| Sirimavo Bandaranaike | Sri Lanka Freedom Party | 2,289,860 | 44.95 | |
| Ossie Abeygunasekera | Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya | 235,719 | 4.63 | |
| Total | 5,094,778 | 100.00 | ||
| Valid votes | 5,094,778 | 98.24 | ||
| Invalid/blank votes | 91,445 | 1.76 | ||
| Total votes | 5,186,223 | 100.00 | ||
| Registered voters/turnout | 9,375,742 | 55.32 | ||
| Source: Election Commission | ||||
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Presidential elections were held in Sri Lanka on 16 November 2019. The incumbent President Maithripala Sirisena's term of office would have ended on 9 January 2020. This was the first presidential election in Sri Lanka where no sitting president, prime minister or opposition leader ran for president. Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the election in a landslide victory, defeating his main opponent Sajith Premadasa.
 Sri Lankan presidential elections | |
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| Indirect elections | |
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| Referendums | |
