The World - News from Dec. 21, 1988

Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa was declared the winner of Sri Lanka’s presidential election, and he appealed for an end to the ethnic violence that has crippled the Indian Ocean island nation. Premadasa’s victory with slightly more than half of the votes ended a campaign marked by hundreds of slayings, which the government blames on the People’s Liberation Front, a Sinhalese extremist group that opposed the election. The intimidation campaign by the Sinhalese extremists kept many people from the polls Monday. Only 55% of 9.3 million eligible voters turned out to vote, compared with 80% in the last presidential election.