More than 700,000 people are eligible to vote at the polls in Sri Lanka's northern province on Saturday. Photograph: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Hundreds of thousands of voters in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka will go to the polls on Saturday in the first local elections to be held in the area for 25 years.
The polls in the northern province, much of which was controlled for decades by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the violent Tamil separatist organisation, have been marred by violence and come amid rising concerns over human rights in the island nation.
Sri Lankan officials say the decision to hold elections in the north shows a commitment to democracy by the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is in his eighth year in power.
Four years after the defeat of the LTTE and the end of the civil war, many observers see the polls as a crucial indicator of future relations between the Tamils and majority ethnic Sinhalese.
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has called the polls an important opportunity to foster political reconciliation.
But opposition politicians and observers have alleged intimidation by the powerful Sri Lankan military, which still maintains a heavy presence in the northern areas wrested from the LTTE.
A group of gunmen attacked the residence of the Tamil National Alliance's most prominent candidate in Jaffna, the capital of the northern province, on Thursday night, beating and threatening nine people including an election observer. The TNA blamed military personnel. Army spokesmen have denied any involvement.
Ananthi Sasitharan, 42, the wife of an LTTE leader who went missing after surrendering at the end of the war in May 2009, said she believed she had been targeted because she had raised human rights abuses by the government at a meeting with the UN human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, who visited Jaffna last month.
More than 700,000 people are eligible to vote in the polls. A coalition of parties representing Sri Lankan Tamils, who comprise 10-12% of the island nation's total population of 21 million, is seen as the favourite to win.
"There are lots of problems but at the end of the day you will probably get a result which will reflect the general will of the people but that result will have been affected by the continuous abuses and malpractices," said Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, an analyst and human rights activist who directs a group of officially sanctioned election monitors.
The TNA remains the favourite to win in Saturday's poll, but analysts say the margin of any victory may be reduced as a result of the tensions.
The government has accused the TNA of renewing calls for a separate state through its push for the devolution of power. The TNA says it wants devolution in a united Sri Lanka, not a separate state.
Rajapaksa and the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance has swept successive presidential and parliamentary polls and, despite rising prices, concerns about corruption and slow development in rural areas, remains popular among voters from the Sinhalese majority in the country.
The president and members of his family, who occupy many senior positions in government, have repeatedly dismissed allegations that war crimes were committed during the final months of the conflict during which tens of thousands of civilians were killed.
"All international laws are made by big, powerful countries but applied only on weaker ones like ours. The countries who make those laws escape themselves. In fact, such countries are laws unto themselves. They discuss, they decide, they apply," Rajapaksa last week told the Indian newspaper the Hindustan Times.
Sri Lanka's permanent representative at the UN said the criticism over human rights lacked objectivity.
The LTTE, an organisation that pioneered suicide bombing, was responsible for systematic human rights abuses including executions, torture and compulsory conscription, in areas under its control.
In July, Rajapaksa ordered an inquiry into mass disappearances, mostly of Tamils, during the war. Activists dismissed the move as a farce.
The Sri Lankan government has resisted any devolution of powers to provinces – seen by some analysts as a prerequisite of any political reconciliation with Tamils – and has banked instead on economic uplift to quell any separatist sentiment.
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