Focus on Northern PC poll: Foreign election observers here this week

By Franklin R. Satyapalan-September 7, 2013

Most of 29 foreign pre-polls observers expected to arrive in Sri Lanka by the end of this week will focus on monitoring the final stages of Provincial Council (PC) election campaigning in the Northern Province, officials said yesterday.

As elections to the Northern PC are being conducted after a spell of almost 25 years, it has drawn the attention of the international community. Hence, the focused interest of pre-polls observers to monitor the happenings, they said.

The Executive Director of PAFFREL, Rohana Hettiarachchi said that at their invitation, a delegation of foreign observers from the Thai-based Asian Network For Free and Fair Elections (ANFFFE) are expected to arrive in the country by Friday.

On the invitation of the Commissioner of Elections, Mahinda Deshapriya the Commonwealth Secretariat had agreed to send a delegation to Sri Lanka this week, but the exact number of monitors is still not known, Elections Secretariat sources said.

A delegation of twenty pre-poll observers from SAARC countries comprising five from India, Pakistan (3), Bangladesh (2), Maldives (2), Bhutan (2), Nepal and Afghanistan (4) are also due in Sri Lanka, the sources said.

Hettiarachchi said that most of the delegates have experience in monitoring foreign elections. They will represent Thailand, Bangladesh, Philippines, Nepal, Japan, Indonesia and Taiwan. "In addition, we had made arrangements to bring down nine foreign pre-poll observers and also deploy 5,000 local observers. We will deploy 800 of them in 200 mobile vehicles".

The Executive Director of CMEV, Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu said that they expected to center their local observers to monitor politically sensitive and areas vulnerable to malpractices around the Northern Province.

"We are deploying 20 local observers to monitor the situation during the campaign to the run up to the September 21 elections and on the day of the polls, we have planned to deploy 50 experienced monitors as well as several mobile observers to monitor on camera polling stations vulnerable to violence or rigging ".

The Executive Director of CAFFE, Keerthi Tennakoon said that they would refrain from bringing down any foreign observers to monitor the PC polls and are in the process of provided enhanced training to 2,700 local monitors.