Since 2009 CaFFE has been urging the authorities to register those have been displaced due to the war so that they could take part in the electoral process at the earliest. After years of continuous lobbying, with election authorities, MPs, political parties and other relevant stakeholders and campaigning , the government introduced Electoral Registration (Special Provisions) Act No 27 of 2013, which was passed in parliament unanimously, which facilitated the registration of IDPs in the Voters Registry. However out of 10243 IDP applications, 5254 applications got rejected by the Elections Commissioner. This is a 51% reject from the total applications and is not acceptable under any circumstances, what complicates the situation is that over 35 000 IDPs did not even attempt to send in applications. Assuring the voting rights of the IDPs has been universally accepted as a necessity, as support from all political parties showed, thus given that context the fact that only 10243 IDPs sent in applications and only 4989 applications were properly filled, shows that adequate lobbying, campaigning and educating of IDPs have not taken place.
In my 2003 publication ‘Waarana Puranaya’ (History of censorship in Sri Lanka) I quoted A. White’s, who was the head of international journalists association, definition of self censorship “living and working in conditions of fear, poverty or employment security, journalists often submit to self censorship, the most corrosive and insidious form of censorship of all.”
CaFFE fears that this will be the worst-case scenario in the coming Northern Provincial Council elections as important issues regarding the election, governance, security and social matters will not be reported.
CaFFE in recent times had pointed out that Sri Lankan mainstream media is suffering from crippling self-censorship and that self-censorship is specially predominant in their reporting of issues faced by the Northern citizens. This was once again shown in the minimal coverage given to CaFFE’s press release titled “CaFFE dismayed at 51% rejection rate of IDP voter applications’ yesterday (July 15.) In it we said that Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) expresses its dismay that 51% of applications forwarded by Northern IDP who applied to be included in the 2012 voter registry were rejected.”
What was more striking was the reaction of the elections commissioner, Mahinda Deshapriya who stated to BBC Sinhala service that he is not bound to answer to any election monitoring body when questioned about CaFFE’s request that ‘CaFFE urges the elections department and relevant stake holders to formulate a systematic process to locate, identify and assist them to register with the elections department so that they can take part in future elections.’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/sri_lanka/2013/07/130715_war_displaced_election.shtml)
While I respect the EC’s position not to answer the concerns raised by observers, I must reiterate that he has a duty to protect the sovereignty of the people. I do not believe that the commissioner is bound to answer me and that was not the point I was making. In the release I expressed that we are grateful that at least 4989 IDPs were able to register in the 2012 voter registry and our request was to expand the IDP voter registration to include those whose applications were rejected as well as the 35,000 IDPs who did not even attempted to send in applications.
As highlighted above this important issue received virtually no media coverage, excepting Daily Mirror, BBC Sinhala Service and several other news websites. Given the recent trend in under reporting pressing issues in the North, I believe that self censorship of the mainstream media might be the biggest hurdle in the Northern Provincial election run.
Rajith Keerthi Tennakoon
Executive Director/CaFFE
July 16th, 2013 |
