Elections Commissioner of Sri Lanka totally blind to election law violations in President's home province

(October 02, Colombo - Lanka Polity) Keerthi Tennekoon, Media spokesman of Sri Lanka election monitoring mission Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) stated that, because the Elections Commissioner is taking no action against election law violations at the forthcoming Southern Provincial Council elections scheduled to be held on October 10, some of the candidates are openly and brazenly committing breach of election laws. "As such this election will go down in election history as one where election malpractices were openly allowed to be committed," he says.

"At other elections, the elections Commissioner who holds discussions with the party secretaries weekly has had no discussions this time," says CaFFE pointing out that the Commissioner has not even replied to the letter addressed to him by CaFFE in this regard. The Elections Commissioner has descended to such a level, CaFFE pinpointed.

The Elections Commissioner gave orders to remove the elections advertisements on either sides of his Office only after the media exposed these illegal acts. If the Elections Commissioner had any interest in halting these election malpractices, he has all the power to take action, Thennakoon asserted.