Eastern PC poll incident free - PAFFREL report

Rasika SOMARATHNA

COLOMBO: The main election watch dog PAFFREL releasing its first supplementary report on the Eastern PC poll yesterday called it largely incident free while noting that violence might raise its head due to heightened competition after the Avurudu break.

According to PAFFREL they had received 18 cases so far with all of them being recorded after the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. PAFFREL Chairman Kingsley Rodrigo said yesterday even though there were 18 complaints, only two could be categorised as serious.

According to PAFFREL incidents have been reported as following Ampara(06), Trincomalee(03), Batticaloa(07) and other (02) with one case of man slaughter reported in Batticaloa which is categorised as questionable with regard to the motive.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo attributed the escalation of incidents after the new year to the heightened political activity with all major parties staking a claim unlike the recently concluded Batticaloa local polls.

He also noted that while parties like UNP abstained from contesting the Batti poll citing the TMVP factor, this time round they had decided to join the race with the same party in the fray.

Meanwhile, PAFFREL has decided to deploy over 2500 monitors for the forthcoming poll which would include a team of international observers numbering over 20.

They are also to deploy local stationary monitors on election day for 1022 polling centres by including two monitors to man each station in addition to mobile groups.