As Max Lerner once said: "When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil."

When there is an ongoing genocide and thousands of Tamil-speaking people are still kept in concentration camps; when people are denied freedom of movement; when arrests, disappearances and rapes are being reported on a daily basis; when independent media is not allowed to visit and document the plight of the Tamil people; and when the country is behind an iron curtain, holding elections is a mockery, said D. Pandian, the state Secretary of the Communist Party of India in Tamil Nadu.

The war was not conducted by the Sri Lankan government alone. It was aided by the Indian government. When the basic tenets of democracy are denied, what is the farce of holding elections, Mr. Pandian said.

Regime change is in the air in Sri Lanka. But culture change is what Sri Lanka needs most. With the majority of the population split, it's up to the ethnic Tamil minority to decide which candidate is the lesser of the two evils.

Rajapaksa and Fonseka have both promised to bring development to the country and lead its rebuilding effort from the war. But neither has presented a plan to resolve the underlying ethnic tensions – and the Tamil complaints of marginalisation – that sparked the rebels’ separatist revolt in the first place.

General Fonseka has referred to the Tamil Nadu politicians as "jokers" and, in an interview with Canada's National Post, he made comments widely seen as ultra-nationalistic or racist in nature:

"I strongly believe that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese, but there are minority-communities and we treat them like our people ... They can live in this country with us. But they must not try to, under the pretext of being a minority, demand undue things".

These two men, along with others, share the responsibility for deaths and destruction in a war that killed more than 80,000 combatants and civilians in the three years prior to May 2009 alone.

Several explosions were heard in Jaffna, a predominately ethnic Tamil city, before polls opened at 7am. An opposition Tamil politician accused the military of firing artillery shells to dissuade voting among Tamils who were expected to learn towards Foneseka. The Military has denied all accounts.