Election monitoring organisations yesterday urged all stakeholders to ensure there would be no violence in the aftermath of the election.
They, however, expressed concern about the possibility of violence spiking up either spontaneously or in a planned manner in the post-election period.
The joint statement was signed by Executive Director, People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), Rohana Hettiarachchi, Executive Director, Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, Executive Director, Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) S. Ranugge, Executive Director, Campaign for Free and Elections (CaFFE) Keerthi Tennakoon, Director, Movement for Free & Fair Elections (MFFE) Manori Kalugampitiya, National Coordinator, Mothers and Daughters of Lanka (MDL) Nimalka Fernando/Daya Herath.
Hettiarachchi said it was the responsibility of political parties to ensure that their members did not take the law into their own hands.
The Executive Director PAFFREL said the postal voting in the election had been conducted in a peaceful atmosphere. "Only two incidents have been reported. Some incidents with respect to propaganda including the display of cutouts have also been reported."
Hettiarachchi said there had been a large number of incidents of violence perpetrated in full view of the public in most cases.
http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=117281
The Election Monitoring Organisations have made the following observations:
"Our primary objective is to ensure a free and fair environment for elections. The sovereignty of the people is foremost in a democracy and the legitimacy of the elected leadership arises from the free vote of a country’s constituency.
"It is a right of the people to be able to choose a candidate of their choice within the framework of a free and fair contest. We call on the government, political parties and those state institutions mandated with the responsibility to conduct free and fair elections, and in particular the Elections Commissioner’s Department and the Police to ensure that."
They also spelled out the following: 1) Voting should not be deterred, by a rise in violence that is accompanied by illegal actions such as the forcible taking of ID cards of voters in targeted areas.
2) There should be no staging of incidents at targeted polling stations, counting agents and counting centres to induce the annulment of results, and the threatening and intimidation of polling agents to chase them from polling stations.
3) There should be no deployment or presence of the armed forces on polling day which would in any way adversely impact voter turn-out and the integrity of the poll, unless called out by the Election Commissioner who has the power to call for the security forces in case of election violence which is beyond the control of the police
4) The political parties will not use the state or private media for its campaign during the "cooling off" period when such propaganda is forbidden.
5) The misuse of huge amount of public resources, including public funds, public servants, public buildings, state media will immediately cease.
No comments:
Post a Comment