No major incidents reported :

Brisk polling in three provinces

by Jayampathy JAYASINGHE and Ranil WIJAYAPALA

The Provincial Council polls in Eastern, Sabaragamuwa and North Central Provinces ended peacefully yesterday at 4 p.m. with an overall voter turnout of around 55 per cent.

The elections were conducted peacefully, Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya said at the conclusion of the polling in all seven districts. Counting began soon afterwards at 236 counting centres in the three provinces.

No major incidents were reported and no major election law violations had taken place despite some minor incidents, the Elections Department and elections monitors said. The poll was held in 1,183 polling centres in the East, 895 centres in the North Central Province and 1,189 centres in Sabaragamuwa.

Thirty five members will be elected to the Eastern Provincial Council, 31 to the North Central Provincial Council and 42 to the Sabaragamuwa Provincial Council, based on the preferential votes obtained by the candidates. According to a spokesman for the centre to investigate elections complaints at the Election Secretariat, they received 117 complaints about election law violations on polling day - 17 complaints from Anuradhapura district, 16 from the Polonnaruwa district, 12 from the Trincomalee district, 19 from the Batticaloa district, 19 from the Ampara district, 13 from the Kegalle district and 26 from the Ratnapura district. However the spokesman said all the incidents reported yesterday had occurred outside polling stations.

“Those incidents had no impact on the overall conduct of the elections”, the spokesman added.

The complaints were mainly about illegal campaigns and assaults, he added. Police Media Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana also told the Sunday Observer that the poll was largely peaceful except for minor incidents in Kalkudah, Vakarai, Hingurakgoda and Kalmunai. Adequate security was provided by the Police and the Police Special Task Force for the conduct of a peaceful election and no major incidents were reported, he added.

Polls Chief Mahinda Deshapriya said that they have taken steps to conduct inquiries to all the incidents and found no serious incidents.

“We investigated all the complaints despite the fact that they felt there was nothing in some of those complaints. Even the incidents we thought were serious ones turned out to be minor when we probed them,” he added.

Meanwhile the Executive Director of the Campaign for Free and Fair Election, Keerthi Tennakoon said that the elections were conducted peacefully though there were some election law violations reported from the seven districts.

“Incidents were reported mainly from the Eastern province, Ninthavur and Akkaraipattu in Ampara district, Ottamavadi in Batticaloa district and Pulmudai in the Trincomalee district at the tail end of the elections day,” he added.

He said CAFFE received 121 complaints regarding elections law violations and 60 per cent of them were about illegal campaigning and propaganda, he added. The Elections Department had advised political parties and candidates not to engage in propaganda activities in the last 48 hours prior to polling day.

Police had also warned organisers of political parties to refrain from taking part in any vehicles processions or from conducting any parade after the conclusion of the voting to avoid clashes. Altogether 21,000 policemen were deployed on election duty. Senior police officers from nine police divisions along with policemen from 108 police stations were involved in the Provincial Council election sources said.