( August 27, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In the snap elections scheduled to be held on September 8 for three of the island's nine provinces, the government backed candidates are expected to win comfortably with the click of the computer key as happened in the past Provincial Government elections.
Ruling UPFA’s stakes are high in Easter Province election as it is known, its victory will be its marketing tool to continue with its heavy hold on the minority Tamil community without any political resolution to the conflict.
In the last Eastern Provincial election, the UPFA government engineered its favoured results by carefully manipulating the outcome. The Election Department helped the UPFA government in the manipulation and votes in certain constituencies were carefully increased to give the wanted victory for the government. The former Election Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake who retired in March 2011 was made to act against his conscience to co-operate with the government to engineer the results. According to a government source (name withheld for his safety reasons) the votes in three constituencies were illegally boosted by the click of a button. The prop up was well planned and ranged from 5% to 15% of the votes counted in these constituencies.
The source claimed the very same propping up is planned to take place with the help of the government backed officials in the Election Department. The present Commissioner General of Elections W.W.Mahinda Deshapriya has so far shown stronger leadership than his predecessor but still to confirm the measures he has taken to curtail the inbuilt abuse of vote pro up in the outcome of elections.
 In the snap elections scheduled to be held on September 8 for three of the island's nin...){kind=link}
Post a Comment