Stage set for Saturday's mini-polls

| by Mirudhala Thambiah

(October 08, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Some 6,488 candidates will be vying for places in the 23 local councils including the prestigious Colombo Municipality at Saturday’s mini - election, but only 420 of them will eventually be elected.

After a gruelling near two month campaign where millions of rupees have been spent the stage is set for Saturday’s local elections for 23 council.

In Colombo where promises have been heaped by both, main parties – the UPFA and the UNP a close contest is on with many of the candidates canvassing late into the night on Wednesday, before nominations were closed.

Colombo city and the suburbs experienced a severe a traffic jam late into the night on Wednesday while fire crackers went off at regular intervals as candidates moved from house to house distributing their propaganda material.

Opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was on the streets campaigning in the final days in Colombo at times entering saloons to distribute propaganda material and talk to people while they were having a haircut. From the UPFA too it was no different with senior members of the party taking time off to speak people in shanties.

The JVP too was canvassing, but a major set back was the internal party struggle which they were trying to resolve.

The Colombo Municipality consisting of 393,085 voters followed by the Dehiwala- Mount Lavinia Municipality registered with 132,903 voters are the councils with the highest number of voters.

The ballot sheet for the Colombo Municipality is considered to be comparatively the longest and is nearly 2 feet, consisting of 9 political parties, 10 independent groups, 19 symbols and 1121 candidates.

For the elections 1,589,622 are registered to vote to elect members to 17 municipal councils, five Pradeshiya Sabhas and one Urban council.

There will be 1167 polling booths in all 23 authorities and polling sessions will be from 7.00 am to 4.00 pm.

The Election Monitoring Groups have also trained their observers to conduct election monitoring programmes during the elections day as well as prior to the elections. The PAFFREL will be 1000 observers will be fielding more than 1000 observers and the CAFFE will be deploying at least 180 monitors, during the day of the elections to conduct election monitoring.

Meanwhile six observers from the Indian Elections commission will be participating in the polls monitoring as a part of their study tour on the comparing of the local government system in India and Sri Lanka.

Speaking to the times online on the Elections arrangements , Mahinda Deshapriya the Commissioner of elections said all the necessary polling related arrangements are already fulfilled. Special Junior Presiding Officers will be sent to each polling station.

He said there will be two zones of Assistant Returning Officers combined to be deployed at the polling booths on the elections day.

“There is a myth coming form the past elections that we are changing or stuffing the ballot papers by the officials while taking to the counting centers , to avoid such suspicion we are pasting a sticker signed by the in charge- polling staff and the agents on the box after the polls. We are taking all type of precautions to avoid such rumours and myths” he added.

The results are expected to be coming in 8.00 p.m. onwards with the postal vote results, but council results are due only after 11.00 p.m. with the Colombo results due only in the early hours of Sunday.