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| Saturday, 20 March 2004 |
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Politics | |
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| State vehicle misuse tops election law violations - NEMEC by Uditha Kumarasinghe The National Election Monitoring and Evaluation Centre (NEMEC) said 426 complaints have already been forwarded to the NEMEC regarding acts of harassment, misuse of Government vehicles and public servants for the election campaign. The majority of these reported incidents have occurred due to misuse of Government vehicles by politicians. Therefore the NEMEC requests to immediately detain these state vehicles used for election campaigns and to take prompt action against those responsible for using these vehicles, NEMEC Coordinating Secretary Amarananda Weerasinghe told the Daily News yesterday. Of these 426 complaints, 340 incidents have directly violated the existing criminal laws, he said. In order to prevent these activities, the NEMEC has already requested Election Commissioner, IGP, Defence Ministry Secretary and the Chairman of the National Police Commission to issue guidelines to the OICs in each Police division to check the vehicles which have been used for the election campaign, he said. Weerasinghe said: "We have also requested the relevant authorities to give directions to the Police, if they have seized any Government vehicles engaged in election campaign and not to release that vehicle without written approval of the Election Commissioner." He said various accidents involving government vehicles have also been reported. One death resulting from such an accident has also been reported. The misuse of highest number of Government vehicles has been reported from Matara, Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Thambuththegama and Bandaragama areas, he said. Meanwhile, the NEMEC will forward the copies of each reported incident to the Election Commissioner, IGP, Defence Ministry Secretary and the Chairman of the National Police Commission. In order to conduct a free and fair election, prompt action should be taken against these incidents, specially the misuse of Government vehicles, he added. |
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