No major polls violence complaints
Lakshmi de Silva
A certain group or some elements are trying to bring discredit to the
country by making false claims and allegations that the run up to the
Western Provincial Council election is violent and corrupt, National
Polls Observation Centre Convenor Prasanna Adikari said.
"Some persons are trying to violate the election laws during the
final stages of the campaign to paint a false picture that the election
campaign was not peaceful or lawful," Adikari told the Daily News
yesterday.
There were about 77 election related complaints during the past two
weeks but only 10 among those could be taken as serious offences.
The rest were minor incidents like tearing a poster or alleging
damages to a candidate's election office in small kiosks or temporary
sheds. When a paper flag or a decoration in such offices were torn, that
was also grounds for a complaint to police. Some were trying to be
popular by making complaints on such minor incidents to the police, he
said.
The election campaign comes to an end on April 23.
Among the complaints of violence were one murder, one stabbing, and
one case of hitting and hitting a person with a pistol." But the other'
complaints were of a minor nature," he noted and could not be taken to
account to show that the election campaign in the three districts of the
Western Province was violent or corrupt. |