President Mahinda Rajapakse could call parliamentary polls four years ahead of schedule if his two key nationalist allies try to block efforts for a political settlement to the festering ethnic conflict, they say.

"The president will try to get the nationalists on board but if that fails, he may go for a quick election," said Sunanda Deshapriya, director at the Centre for Policy Alternatives think tank.

Deshapriya said the poor performance by the nationalist Marxist JVP, or the People's Liberation Front, and the all monks party of JHU showed that Rajapakse no longer needed their support to win elections.

Official results of Thursday's poll showed that Rajapakse's People's Alliance won 225 of the 266 local councils. The JVP barely managed to retain one council and the JHU failed to win anything.

The two parties supported Rajapakse in his successful run for the presidency in November in return for a pledge to review a Norwegian-backed peace process in place since 2002.

However, since the election, Rakapakse has moved to shore up a fragile ceasefire and return to talks with the rebels amid intense international pressure to avoid a return to war.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the ethnic conflict since 1972.

"A snap election is a very high probability. It will be a case of winner-takes-it-all. His party can expect to do well." said Tamil politician Dharmalingam Sidhathan, a former Tamil militant who now leads the Democratic People's Liberation Front.

Newspaper editorials also suggested that an early election was a possibility.

"No doubt this augurs well for the future and the peace process," the state-run Daily News said in an editorial on Saturday, underscoring the government's jubilation at the drubbing the hardliners received.

"It is quite obvious that those political parties seen as espousing the interests of specific cultural groups have been rejected."

The JVP and JHU contested the local elections independently in an apparent effort to test popular support for their stance on the peace process, analysts said. Both want to end Norway's involvement.