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| Sunday, 28 March 2004 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429239 / 2331181 Fax : 94 11 2429230 For a peaceful general election With only five days to go for the April 2nd General Elections, there is much excitement, expectation and speculation. The Elections Department, the Police and other State agencies are reported to be geared to carry out their duties at optimum. Violence in the run up to next Friday's election is according to the Police, 50 per cent less than at the December 2001 polls. There have been some serious incidents, but the large majority have been minor ones, the run of the mill stuff. The Police have done a good job in curbing violence. The IGP Indra de Silva and his DIGs Jayantha Wickramaratne directly placed with the overall operations to combat election related violence, DIG (Elections) Gamini Navaratne must be commended for the measures taken in curbing crime. The Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake is an old hand at the game and he is doing a splendid job, as usual. While most candidates have shunned violence, there are yet a fair number who believe in thuggery and intimidation in order to coerce their constituents to vote for them. The public have had more than their fill of entertainment provided by self important politicians with high sounding names and designations going for each others jugular on the idiot box. Undoubtedly these jack in the box TV shows provide much amusement and relief to the public, heavily burdened with an unbearably high cost of living, large rampant corruption and a whole host of other problems. These fire and brimstone debates go a long way in relieving the tedium of our humdrum lives. However, a dark cloud has emerged and is hanging ominously over us, the cloud of grave politically inspired violence. The Secretary General of the Freedom Alliance Susil Premajayantha has alerted the Elections Commissioner to some alarming information. He has warned the Elections Chief of an alleged plot by the UNF to sabotage the April 2 General Election by storming polls centres on Election Day, employing persons clad in LTTE type camouflage uniforms and visits to parents of soldiers asking them not to vote for the Freedom Alliance, if they do not want their children to go to war and risk losing their lives. This information must be taken very seriously for already there have been instances of sabotage. For instance, there was a report from Nuwara Eliya that two brothers of Minister S.B. Dissanayake had allegedly stormed postal voting centres and forced people to vote for the UNP under pain of death. The report alleges that the thugs had even gone to the extent of checking the ballot papers to make sure that their victims had voted for the candidate of their choice. This indeed is not good, not good at all. Last evening a former Minister, a Government Agent and an EPDP cadre were shot at and wounded. We fervently hope it is not a foretaste of things to come. The authorities would be well advised to call on the Army to assist the Police in maintaining law and order, with emphasis on preventing the disruption of voting at polling booths and the safe transport of ballot boxes to the counting centres. So onto April 2, and a hopefully peaceful general election. |
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