Election laws inadequate, says CAFFE

Lakshmi de SILVA

The prevailing election laws of our country are not adequate to cope with the present time, media spokesman of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE), Keerthi Tennakoon said at a press conference in Colombo yesterday (25). He was addressing the press conference to release the CAFFE report on Central and North Western Provincial Council Election March 2009.

Though there were no major incidents of violence, other election laws were violated by the three major political parties contesting to a lesser or higher degree, he said.There were 65 cases of assaults and 19 cases of intimidation reported from both provinces the, report stated.

As in the previous elections, the Commissioner of Elections and his staff had performed their duties to conduct the elections according to administrative norms at a very high level of efficiency which was not an east task considering the fact that elections being held almost each month, the report also stated.

However, about 50,000 voters of the two Provinces were not able to cast their votes as they did not have their National Identity Cards and it was a violation of their right to vote, Tennakoon said.

In the present Western Province election campaign, Police had removed posters and cutouts during the first few days but gradually posters and digital cutouts reappearing with preference vote numbers. There were also campaign offices at different places though such offices were not real election centres but only use to display cutouts which were not allowed under the election laws, Tennakoon said.

A number of complaints of violence were reported from Wattala, Katana Gampaha, Divulapitiya during the last five days, he noted.