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Journalism of Courage
COLOMBO, APRIL 6: Under fire from the opposition for an allegedly fraudulent local election in January, President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government on Tuesday held a second round of provincial council elections marred only by heavy rain and sporadic incidents of violence.
An estimated seventy percent of the seven million voters exercised their franchise today to elect new governments in the southern provinces of Uva, Sabaragamuwa, Anuradhapura-Polonnaruwa, Kandy-Nuwara Eliya and the Western province which includes the district of Colombo. Voter turn-out, normally high in Sri Lanka, was unaffected by the inclement weather.
One killing was reported from Kandy but it is unclear if it was election-related. In another incident, Colombo mayor and the opposition United National Party (UNP)’s chief ministerial candidate for the Western province Karu Jayasuriya said his motorcade was attacked by a mob at a polling station, damaging three vehicles.
Shoot-outs were reported from two areas, while in Nuwara Eliya,a member of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) was said to have been assaulted.
The UNP reported 50 incidents to the Elections Commissioner but both police and independent election monitors said polling was mainly “peaceful”.
“By and large there are no reports of serious violence or malpractices. There are reports of some incidents which we are checking, but they are nowhere near the scale of what happened in the last election,” said CMEV convenor Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu.
He was referring to the north-west Wayamba provincial council election in January which was followed by allegations of violence and widespread rigging said to have been engineered by the government.
The People’s Alliance (PA) victory in those elections was seen by many, including party loyalists, as tainted.
Sensing an opportunity, the opposition UNP had latched on to the slogans of “free and fair elections” and “save democracy” as their main campaign platform for this round of provincial council elections.The vociferous campaign put the government on the defensive, forcing Kumaratunga to issue dire threats to partymen who acted in violation of election laws.
However, except for a few isolated incidents, the government seemed to have risen to the UNP’s challenge, ensuring fairly smooth elections in most areas.
The complete results are expected on Wednesday though trends will be available late Tuesday when counting begins.
Provincial councils were introduced as a system of limited devolution through the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. They have been dismissed by all political groupings, variously as an `Indian imposition’, ineffective, wasteful and a burden on the exchequer. Provincial issues were shunted to the sidelines of the election with the two main contestants, the PA and UNP, mounting national election-style campaigns against each other.
The results of these elections are expected to indicate which way the wind is blowing for the contesting parties, including smaller groups like the Janatha VimukhiPerumina, ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections due in 2000.
