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Voter intimidation, but no re poll for NE
With post-mortems into last week’s presidential election continuing, evidence has now emerged that despite the Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake being informed by his election staff and local monitoring groups on how northeast polling was disrupted on Election Day, the Commissioner saw no reason to order a re-poll.

According to some reports grenade attacks on polling stations and incidents of violence had compelled the affected polling booths to be kept closed for more than an hour. There were reports of attempts to create a climate of fear among would-be voters by intimidating those who cast their ballot.
Attacks on voters or harassment had taken place not only on Election Day but after as well. One such victim was former Jaffna Government Agent T. Vaithiyalingam whose house windows were smashed two days after the poll for having voted despite the Tiger boycott.

The official reports sent in by election monitoring groups and their suggestion for a re poll were ignored by the Elections Commissioner. Mr. Dissanayake made no mention of any re polling in his address before announcing the final election results. The Commissioner nevertheless told a UNP-lawyer delegation, who met him before the final results were announced, that he did not have sufficient evidence to call for a re-poll in any part of the island.

The Supreme Court issued the following guidelines when deciding on re-polling: Failure to open the polling centre at 7 am, failure to close polling at 4 pm; not transporting the ballot boxes from the polling station to the counting centre in the prescribed manner; the conduct at the polling station in a manner where the senior presiding officer is unable to control the proceedings due to one reason or another; threatening, attacking or chasing away of polling agents during the course of voting; breach of the peace at the polling station in a way that the conduct of the poll is not rendered possible or forcibly stuffing ballot papers into the ballot boxes. In the polling booths where grenade attacks had taken place, there was very little polling.

Reports from Batticaloa said, polling was low at the start and picked up slightly later in the morning but when polling booths were attacked would-be voters kept away. The CMEV – one of the local monitoring groups said in a letter to the Commissioner,

“The CMEV requests you to use the powers vested in you as Elections Commissioner to call for a re-poll in the North and East to ensure that a truly free and fair election of the chief executive of Sri Lanka takes place”.
“We would like to refer to Section 103(2) of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that mandates the Commissioner to ensure the conduct of a free and fair poll. This is, as you well know, in terms of the Presidential Elections Act of 1981 and the Elections (Special Provisions) Act of 1988, is especially so in circumstances which could affect the outcome of the elections”, the CMEV said.

An organized programme of voter-intimidation was evident in the north with grenade attacks, posters asking voters to refrain from voting, personal threats, burning of tyres and the closing of transit points. The intimidation had a clear bearing on the day of the polling with just a single voter turning up at the Muhamalai cluster polling booth.

The Sunday Times learns that the Elections Commissioner took the position that buses were kept in readiness for voters but since no voters turned up, he could not accept the position that polling was affected. It was only apparent that the incidents of intimidation in the north and east affected more than half a million eligible voters who were kept away from casting their vote.

International organizations including the EU condemned the LTTE for enforcing a boycott of the poll. The US embassy in a separate statement said, “The United States regrets that Tamil voters in the northern and eastern parts of the island did not vote in significant numbers due to a clear campaign by the LTTE. As a result, a significant portion of Sri Lanka’s people were deprived of the opportunity to make their views known. The United States condemns this LTTE interference in the democratic process”, the statement released by the embassy said.

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