It was a mixed message from voters, ousting Ranil Wickreme-singhe's United National Party (UNP), but giving large minorities to smaller parties on opposing ends of the island's ethnic divide.

"This is not a good thing. The country did not need another minority government," Rohan Edrisinha, a legal expert at the University of Colombo, said after Sri Lanka's third parliamentary election in four years.

The Elections Commission said with more than two-thirds of the votes counted yesterday, Kumaratunga's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) had 47.6 percent of the vote, compared with 37.3 percent for the UNP.

An all-clergy party of Buddhist monks had 6.4 percent, while a rebel Tamil Tiger-backed party had six percent.

The figures are still in flux, but projections give the Alliance up to 109 seats in the 225-member parliament -- four short of a majority -- while the UNP is forecast to take 80.