This time, however, it was only able to secure a slender majority in parliament with the support of two minority, regional parties. The PA managed to win this election with mass-scale rigging and intimidation. Even the election commissioner had to agree to annul the votes of a number of polling stations due to pressure from the opposition. The independent poll-monitoring committee also said in their report that the PA government used the state machinery for its campaign. Over a thousand violent incidents were reported and 86 people killed.
Election results show the sharp drop in popular support from when they first came to power.
This is not the end of the story. What happened in the North, where the war is taking place under occupation by the Sri Lankan Army, is very significant. No-one in Sri Lanka believes that there was even the semblance of a genuine election in the North. In most of this area not a single vote was cast. These armed groups prevented people from voting and did not allow other parties' candidates to conduct a campaign.