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It has been reported that the ballot papers in some of the districts
would be as long as four feet or more for the General Election scheduled
for April 8 where over 7,600 candidates are contesting from 630
recognised parties and independent groups and that the Elections
Department is faced with severe problems in printing, stacking, handling
and counting such long ballot papers. Even ballot boxes are found to be
inadequate in size and number to handle such huge ballot papers.
I feel that the problem could be resolved easily and permanently by
assigning a number for each of the contesting parties as well as the
contestants. Suppose, there are 40 political parties and independent
groups contesting in a particular district, numbers from one to 40 could
be assigned to such parties in some order.
The numbers assigned should be published for the information of
voters as in the case of numbers assigned to contestants. The ballot
paper will have one cage for the voter to mark the number of the party
he selected and three other cages for him to mark his preferences.
There is an alternative method, if assigning numbers for major
political parties represented in Parliament is not acceptable; the
alternative method requires that the symbols of three major parties
represented in the last Parliament for the particular district be
printed in the ballot paper against which an empty cage for each party
is provided for the voter to cast his vote.
For other minor parties, as in the previous method two blank cages
could be provided along with the cages of the major parties, for the
voter to write the number of the political party or independent group of
his choice and to mark his vote. Here also, there should be three cages
for the voter to mark his preferences.
Following any of the above methods, the size of all ballot papers for
all districts could be identical in appearance and be reduced to about
eight by six inches in size.
This will solve problems encountered and save millions of rupees for
the country.
I hope the methods I have suggested catch the attention of the
authorities and these methods be considered at least for the future
elections.
K M GUNARATNE - Moratuwa
This is regarding the article by Renton de Alwis in your issue of
March 17, 2010.
Although most of his comments regarding Moon and the UN probe on Sri
Lanka are totally correct, I must disagree with regards to the climate
science part of his piece. Climate science is far from settled, and his
assertion of ‘global warming’ is simply not supported by the evidence,
which shows that the global temperatures have not increased since 1998.
The use of this argument in his piece only weakens his article.
The fact that throughout this decade, any and all evidence which
indicates actual cooling or a deviation from the ‘Truth’ of ‘warming’
have been suppressed, with open-minded editors of journals being removed
from office for publishing these data, clearly shows that there has been
a well-orchestrated campaign by the Big Green Lobby to sustain an
evidence-lacking line of indoctrination about the existence of this
supposed ‘climate change due to man’ as a means of maintaining their
billions of dollars of funding. It stinks to high heaven, and is
definitely suspect.
An equally large number of scientists have repeatedly signed
documents stating they do not believe there is evidence of any man-made
climate change, but these sadly are not reported by the international
media.
The real problem of the use of fossil fuels is not the CO2 (most of
which produced on earth is from the respiration of animals and release
from volcanoes) but rather the pollution it causes to the local (not
global) environment. This is why the use of nuclear power is something
that every nation should pursue in earnest.
Mahamaha Raja
An injustice was caused to a section of the teachers in assisted
schools when their schools were taken over by the Government in 1961.
Strangely enough their period of service in assisted schools had not
been counted for pension purposes, only their service under Government
in the same school had been considered. I cannot really understand the
reasons for this discrepancy.
Say for example if a teacher who had served 25 years in an assisted
school up to the taking over of his school, the rest of his service up
to retirement from the same school was only ten years and he got a
pension for ten years only.
There were thousands of teachers who suffered badly that way. I know
of many teachers who were victims of that vicious system. You can come
across such victims who are drawing less than Rs 10,000 while the more
fortunate ones who had been working under Government all throughout are
drawing over Rs 25,000 per month.
The number of such victims have dwindled to a very few by now, as the
majority have suffered immensely and passed away. The remaining few are
surviving under critical conditions with no one to look after them.
Perhaps their dear ones also must have died and gone. They are all in
their eighties or nineties fighting tooth and nail to survive. All this
is merely for the reason they had been teaching in Assisted Schools. We
must not forget the fact that they were the ones who spent their whole
life for the sake of education.
Can the Government not do something in the name of justice by way of
giving solace to those pensioners who are at their last stage of life?
In case it’s not easy to adjust the pension scale will it not be
possible to add a special allowance at least to bring them in par with
those who are working all throughout at Government schools.
I hope the Government will try its best bring redress to them who are
in the evening of their lives.
H Abesiriwardena - Panadura
Billboards on pavements:
The other day as I walked on the pavement along Havelock Road,
Colombo 5, I was horrified when I had to stop for a billboard of a
politico which had been erected on the pavement blocking the pedestrian
movement.
In recent times, billboards have been springing up on one’s own front
yard without any consideration for either the pedestrian or environment.
This however takes the cake! Slap bang, right in the middle of the
pavement.
The public has every right to know who gave permission for this board
to be erected. Is it the CMC? Or is the RDA? Or is it the highhanded
action of the politico himself? Whichever it is, these are State
Agencies which are supposed to look after the welfare and safety of
pedestrians. Are they doing their job?
R DE SILVA - Dehiwala
This is in relation to a story I read. Passengers had a good time
watching the conductor of the bus giving ‘light blows’ to an innocent
dog. I can imagine those are real ‘light blows’ given with an umbrella.
The article says that it was not a homeless dog, but a dog that was well
taken care of with a good breed. If you were very sure about that, why
did you not try to find the owner of the dog?
Since we do not have a humane society in Sri Lanka, as we always
contact Police Department for every thing, some body had to hand over
the dog to the Police station. Then they will find out who the owner is?
I doubt that Sri Lankans are that humane and passionate to treat an
animal in such a passionate way. People throw bricks at animals. Injure
them. Kill all kind of animals and eat their flesh. Our best friend the
cow, we get all kind of help from them and eventually kill and eat. I
wonder when will Sri Lankans be civilized. The greediness, selfishness,
the grudge, the inhumane acts and thoughts those they are living with, a
real disgrace to our religion and the name of Sri Lanka, the passionate
island.
Nalin Hemapala
I am very grateful to you for the centre page article on the CFA
(February 22). I appeal to you to publish a supplement, preferably on a
Saturday, with photographs too, on the CFA.
The brutality of Prabakaran and the LTTE, their access to foreign
funds, arms, ships etc, the recruitment of children by the LTTE and
their brutal attacks on the Dalada Maligawa, Sri Maha Bodhiya, The
Central Bank and on the Deep Penetration Unit of the Army - the
whereabouts of which were leaked to the LTTE by the then Government.
It is with my heartfelt gratitude to you that I say that the Daily
News is the only national newspaper which carried a centre-page article
on the brutal terrorists on February 22.
Ananda Darmapala - Nawala
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