Mud-slinging and acts of violence and intimidation escalate in run-up to Presidential poll

The highlight of last week’s Presidential election campaign was the launch of the election manifesto of the Opposition’s common candidate, Retired General Sarath Fonseka. Meanwhile, the government side has stepped up its smear campaign against the Opposition common candidate, producing fresh evidence to support its accusations that the former Army chief had used his influence to secure business contracts for his son-in-law.

General Fonseka’s 10-point manifesto, titled “Vishvasanneeya Venasak” (Believable Change), was launched in Colombo on Thursday. Among those present on the occasion were United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) leader Somawansa Amarasinghe, and the former Chief Justice, Sarath N. Silva.

The highlights of General Fonseka’s manifesto include dismantling an outsize Cabinet; dissolving Parliament, setting up a caretaker Cabinet, taking immediate steps to abolish the Executive Presidency and the Press Council Bill; the eradication of fraud and corruption, and offering a Rs. 10,000 pay rise for public servants (see box story on the manifesto).

President Mahinda Rajapaksa presents his manifesto tomorrow. The manifesto will outline projected development programmes for the country. Meanwhile, with the Presidential poll less than three weeks away, polls monitors say election violence is escalating. The government and the opposition are accusing each other of engaging in violence aimed at disrupting their respective campaigns. Up to yesterday morning, election monitors had received a total of 217 reports of election-related violence.

The reports include cases of assault; intimidation of political opponents, and vandalism of party offices.
Postal voting for the election is scheduled for January 12 and 13. The Elections Secretariat has received more than 450,000 postal voting applications, a record number, according to officials.

Those eligible for postal voting are public servants detailed for election duty at the January 26 polls and members of the armed forces and the Police Department.

Tomorrow, the Elections Secretariat will hand over the poll cards of displaced voters to the postal authorities. Some 31,700 persons from the Jaffna and Wanni districts are qualified to vote as long-distance or displaced voters. About 4,000 distance vote applications have been rejected, mainly because they were found to have been duplicated.

About 40 international observers are expected to arrive in the country next week, two weeks ahead of the election. They will observe the situation in the run-up to the election, be present at polls centres on election day, and follow developments in the days following the polls.

In its first Presidential poll interim report, released last week, election monitoring group People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) said the election observers would focus largely on polling in the North and the East. PAFFREL will deploy some 6,500 observers across the 10,875 polling stations in the 22 districts of the nine provinces.