Election Over: But……….

"We need peace. We should be able to sleep without fear our children will be taken away," an unemployed 50-year-old woman who identified herself as Kannahi said after voting in Valaichchenai.
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by Ravi Nessman

Image: Kadisa Umma, left, mother, and Nafrin Jamaldeen, son of Mustafa Jamldeen, unseen, a victim of Provincial Council election violence, greave at Batticaloa General hospital in Batticaloa, Saturday, May 10, 2008. Allegations of fraud, voter intimidation and violence marred Sri Lanka's Eastern Province elections Saturday, which the government had touted as a celebration of democracy for a region recently liberated from the Tamil Tiger rebels. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

(May 11, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka Guardian) Allegations of fraud, voter intimidation and sporadic violence marred elections in Sri Lanka's east Saturday despite the government's claims they would be a celebration of democracy for the region recently liberated from the Tamil Tiger rebels.

The vote was intended to show that a "new dawn" was coming to the impoverished area, to give minority communities a degree of self-rule and to counter rebel demands for an independent state.

Many voters said the new provincial government should focus on ending the chaos and violence in the east, which is divided among Tamil, Sinhalese and Muslim communities.

"We hope things will be straightened out," said a doctor voting in the town of Batticaloa, who, like nearly every other voter interviewed, declined to give his name out of fear of reprisals.

The government, with the help of a breakaway group of former rebels known as the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, or TMVP, seized control of the province late last year after 13 years of rebel rule. Civil war continues to rage around the separatists' de facto state in the north.

The ruling party ran in a coalition with the TMVP, which has been accused of threatening voters and opposition candidates, while the main opposition United National Party joined with the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress.

Partial results released Sunday showed the ruling party coalition ahead with six seats on the 37-seat council, while the opposition coalition won four and a smaller party captured one, the election commission reported.

Independent monitors said the election went smoothly in some areas, but quickly unraveled in others.

Kingsley Rodrigo, head of the People's Action for Free and Fair Elections, an independent monitoring group, said the TMVP was threatening and intimidating voters across the province Saturday.

"There are many, many violations taking place," he said.

The former rebels have been accused by residents and international rights groups of waging a campaign of terror since the rebels were ousted, killing opponents, extorting money from businessmen and forcibly conscripting new recruits — some of them children.

Other monitors reported gangs of people shuttling between polling stations to vote numerous times in the Valaichchenai region north of Batticaloa.

The perpetrators each held a series of false identity cards signed by local officials saying they lived in each polling district, said Sunanda Deshapriya, an official with the independent Center for Monitoring Election Violence.

"At almost every station (in the area), stuffing is taking place," he said.

Opposition observers were also threatened and forced to leave many polling stations, he said. The monitors called for a revote in the affected areas.

"We can't in any way accept this as a free and fair election," said Tissa Attanayake, general secretary of the opposition UNP.

There were also several incidents of violence.

In Kathankudi, four people from a family of opposition supporters were badly burned when a bottle of acid was thrown into their house, said Jamaldeen Farida, one of the injured.

A supporter of the ruling party coalition, S. Tarek, was attacked by opposition supporters outside a polling station in the town of Eravur, his brother-in-law Mustafa Nazir said. Hospital workers said Tarek suffered a broken skull.

Even before the vote, Rodrigo said widespread intimidation and the ruling party's misuse of government resources made it impossible to hold a fair election.

Education Minister Susil Premjayantha, who has been campaigning in the province, said he had not heard about the violence or fraud, but he doubted the reports and accused the monitors of bias.

"Compared to other elections in other parts of the country, I think this election is free and fair," he said.

Turnout was about 60 percent of the province's nearly 1 million registered voters, according to the elections commission. Rodrigo said the turnout was quite low for such an important election.

The election was also held amid a series of attacks blamed on the Tamil Tigers which began Friday night with the bombing of a cafe in the town of Ampara that killed 11.

Early Saturday, rebels bombed and sank an empty navy cargo ship in the eastern port town of Trincomalee. The rebels later fired seven mortar rounds into the village of Pannalgama, wounding four civilians, the military said.

"We need peace. We should be able to sleep without fear our children will be taken away," an unemployed 50-year-old woman who identified herself as Kannahi said after voting in Valaichchenai.

Her husband disappeared at a police checkpoint 18 years ago and she had to pull her two sons out of high school and send them into hiding so they would not be forcibly conscripted by the rebels, she said. She cannot afford a house or the dowry needed to marry off her daughter, she added.

Asked for her last name, Kannahi laughed nervously. "If I tell, I might disappear in the night. That's how things happen here," she said. (Ap)
- Sri Lanka Guardian