Voters were choosing between Prime Minister Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Srima Dissanayake of the United National Party. Both candidates are widows who lost their husbands to political assassins, Dissanayake on Oct. 24 when Gamini Dissanayake, the original opposition candidate, was killed along with 53 others by a suspected Tamil suicide bomber.
Both women have promised to end the bloody campaign for an independent homeland being waged by the minority Tamil community, but Kumaratunga is widely expected to win the poll.
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