Letter to Commissioner of Elections to urgently address concerns voiced by voters
The Following is full text of letter sent to Mr. Dayananda Dissanayake, Elections Commissioner by Centre for Monitoring Election Violence CMEV:
27th January 2010
BY HAND, FAX & REGISTERED POST
Mr. Dayananda Dissanayake
Elections Commissioner
Department of Elections
Sarana Mawatha,
Rajagiriya
Dear Mr. Dissanayake,
I wish to bring to your urgent attention the concerns voiced by voters and shared by CMEV with regard to the counting process of votes in the 26 January 2010 Presidential Election and the announcement of the results.
In particular, we have received information regarding disruption of the counting process including physical assault of counting officers and agents of the principal opposition candidate in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kurunegala and Matale. The informants insist on anonymity in the interests of their personal security and I am therefore, regrettably unable to furnish you with further details of their complaints and concerns at this moment.
Consequently, I am writing to request you to, as a matter of the utmost priority, publicly acknowledge and address voter concerns and doubts about the integrity of the electoral process and in particular, the process of counting and release of results, before you make the official announcement of the final result.
Please be assured of my cooperation
Thanking you.
Yours sincerely
……………………………………………………….
DR. PAIKIASOTHY SARAVANAMUTTU
CO-CONVENOR
5 Comments
But who ever believed that MR & co would not try to fix things!!!
There appears to be trouble brewing. The way things are, does anyone know what was put into ballot boxes? Anyway, what was counted? was there any counting at all? Were the published figures tallied with the counted figures? It looks the manipulation took place at the highest level. There are signs of tales emerging tommorrow from all around the country!
The results of a flawed and illegal electoral processs stemming from the non implementation of the 17th amendment. The culture of impunity and non tolerance of democratic dissent pervades. Hence nothing good can result from an illegal anti-democratic process just as what is fundementally evil cannot give rise to anything good.
This Commissioner of Elections and the then army commander Lionel Balagalle were found guilty of "violating the fundamental rights of voters in the LTTE held areas of the North-East province by preventing them from casting their votes at the general elections held in December 2001 by the Supreme Court on a peitition filed by five tamil voters of the areas held by the LTTE in the northeast province" by a three member bench comprised Justices Mark Fernando,Ameer Ismail and C.V.Vigneswaran.
(In reality, thousands of voters were prevented by the army from casting their votes)
The SC ordered the State to pay one hundred thousand rupees as compensation to each petitioner and the Commander of the Sri Lanka Army,Lionel Balagalle, to pay rupees ninety thousand from his personal fund.
The SC further ordered the Commissioner of Elections,Mr Dayananda Dissanayake to pay one thousand rupees from his personal fund.
The SC also held that allowing President Chandrika Kumaratunge,Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake,Deputy Defence Minister Anurudha Ratwatte and Speaker Anura Bandaranaike to cast their votes from their residences was against the law and it had no legal validity. ( TamilNet - Tuesday 25 March 2003)
This same commissioner will/did not annul this election and order a re-poll, with all the election violations reported. He himself complained that more than 100 directives from him to the police and state media were disregarded.An Election Commission would have had real power to order a re-poll.But such commission (& other commissions)did not come into being as Mahinda Rajapakse refused to appoint the Constitutional Council as required by the 17th Amendmant.
Monitors should be monitors. They should at least furnish a confidential report by hand to the EC rather remain anonymous on disruptive events.
Everybody knows CMEVs and it's promotors intent. Just as much as the Manifesto of SF is vague, his loyal election monitor too is non-descriptive.