Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004
Courtesy:The Island
by Shamindra Ferdinando
TULF leader V. Anandasangaree said the European Union has identified the LTTE as the ‘primary source of the violence’ at the April 2 parliamentary election. The EU’s Election Observation Mission Chief (in Sri Lanka) John Cushnahan has said that the LTTE’s primary aim was to garner a huge majority for their proxy the TNA to project it (the LTTE) as the sole representatives of the Tamils.
“Didn’t I tell this repeatedly,” he asked. “The EU also confirmed my claim that the LTTE engaged in violence in support of the TNA,” the veteran politician said. In the run-up to the poll, Anandasangaree had repeatedly urged the then government, Elections Department and the international community to pressurise the LTTE to cease its terror directed against rival political parties.
The EU’s final report on the election was evidence that the powerful grouping did not accept LTTE’s ridiculous claim that they were the sole representatives of the Tamil speaking people. Quoting the report released in Colombo on June 17, the former Jaffna district MP said: “Firstly, the LTTE intended that no other rival Tamil party (or Tamil candidate from the mainstream political alliances) to the TNA would be able to claim to represent Tamil interests. A chilling message to this effect was sent early in the campaign when a UNP candidate and an EPDP activist were murdered. Incidents such as this seriously restricted the right of parties other than the TNA to campaign freely in the North and East. During the 2004 elections the major incidence of violence originated with the LTTE, whereas in the earlier elections, the primary source of the violence (although not all) were the two largest political alliances.”
Anandasangaree applauded the EU for saying the truth. “Cushnahan didn’t mince his words,” the TULF veteran said, while urging the government and the UNP-led opposition to reject what he called the LTTE’s ridiculous sole representative claim.
Anandasangaree believes the 22-member TNA parliamentary group has no moral right to be in Parliament. The EU has unmasked them, he said, challenging the TNA to contradict the EU. “I am sure the LTTE, the TNA and their supporters never expected the EU to be so blunt. They never thought the report was going to undermine their efforts to gain international recognition,” he said.
Replying to questions, he pointed out that there were sharp differences between the EU report and that of the others who monitored the poll. “Wouldn’t it be absurd to have different reports on the April election. But the unprecedented EU report had unmasked all phoney poll monitors,” he said, while urging foreign governments which funded polls monitoring groups to assess their performances.
Anandasangaree said the UPFA government and the UNF should be grateful to the EU for unmasking the LTTE and the TNA. It would be interesting to note what the EU had to say about the split in the LTTE. “There is a general perception that three of the five election-related murders were backed by the LTTE in an attempt to intimidate other Tamil contestants. For example on March 30, a TNA candidate who supported Karuna’s split was killed together with his brother-in-law in Batticaloa. On the same day, the deputy Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the Northeast University who supported interests of Eastern Tamils, was seriously injured in Batticaloa.”
The EU also reported cases of multiple voting and impersonation in most cluster polling stations, Anandasangaree said. The Elections Commissioner must take notice of the EU report, he said, expressing the belief the UPFA and the UNF would not be misled by the devious TNA MPs.
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Saturday, June 5th, 2004
Opinion - Leader Page Articles
Courtesy: The Hindu; India
By Nirupama Subramanian
Behind the apparent triumph of ITAK, a proxy of the LTTE, in the Sri Lankan elections is a tale of massive subversion of the democratic process.
SRI LANKA’s recent elections gave the Tamil National Alliance (ITAK) 22 seats in Parliament. ITAK, an alliance of five Tamil parties, is a proxy of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Eight of its parliamentarians were elected from Jaffna and the rest from other parts of the North-East. The LTTE projected ITAK’s performance in the election as its triumph.
But behind the apparent triumph is a tale of subversion of the democratic process on a scale so massive, especially in Jaffna, that in a similar situation in an Indian constituency, the Election Commission would have countermanded the election. At the very least, the evidence would have warranted re-polling in scores of polling booths. For the LTTE to claim a mandate from the Tamil people on the basis of this flawed election is an exercise in deception.
From the start of the election process, it was clear that the LTTE — which wanted ITAK to win the maximum number of seats — would not permit a free and fair election in the North-East. In the East, it killed three non-ITAK candidates, two of them early in the campaign. In Jaffna, it did not permit any party other than ITAK to canvass for votes.
The Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) led by Douglas Devananda, and a breakaway group of ITAK, led by V. Anandasangaree, who quit the alliance refusing to kowtow to the LTTE, formed the main opposition to ITAK. But they and their candidates found themselves under virtual house arrest. They had no access to voters and the voters had no access to them.
Mr. Devananda wrote 16 letters to the Elections Commissioner from the day the nominations were accepted to the date of the elections, bringing to his attention the serious threat the LTTE posed to the holding of a free and fair election, to no avail. His supporters could not hire vehicles or loudspeakers to run their campaign. When they did venture out to canvass votes, bands of youth on motorcycles rode up menacingly, telling people to disperse and not accept any EPDP campaign material.
In a fundamental rights petition now before the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, Thambithurai Sivakumaran, an EPDP candidate, has said the atmosphere was marred by “numerous acts of political intimidation and violence” making it impossible for his party and the Anandasangaree group to campaign freely. Their supporters were “threatened and physically assaulted, prevented from using loudspeakers and holding rallies, were being harassed when circulating leaflets and canvassing door to door,” the petition says.
The situation had deteriorated to such an extent that Mr. Anandasangaree did not step out of his office even for a single day’s campaigning. “No meetings were held by me. No canvassing was allowed. Paper advertisements were either censored or prevented from being published,” he said in a recent statement.
The Colombo-based Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) said in its interim report that “the election campaign in the North and East has turned out to be fraught with violence and flagrant disregard for the democratic rights of the citizens of these areas.”
The group said there was not adequate focus on the rights of voters to receive information regarding the different political parties and groups contesting the elections in order to enable them to make an informed choice.
“Given a situation where no group other than the [ITAK] has been able to enter and canvass for votes in these areas, once again the issue of whether an election held under such circumstances could be considered to be free and fair remains an issue,” the CMEV report said.
In spite of the adverse reports, the Election Commission decided to go ahead and hold the election in Jaffna as scheduled. If the campaign flouted every democratic norm, the election was farcical. Independently of one another, four groups, two Sri Lankan — PAFFREL and CMEV — and two international — the Commonwealth Observer Group and the European Union Election Observation Mission — witnessed the polls in Jaffna.
All four came up with near-identical findings: large-scale voter impersonation; multiple voting; ITAK supporters intimidating EPDP polling agents; ITAK supporters ejecting agents of other parties from polling stations; ITAK transporting voters to polling stations; polling officials aiding and abetting ITAK; polling officials not fastidious about checking for identification ink to ensure that people who had voted once did not vote again; people washing off the identification ink from their fingers; and ballot boxes bearing the ITAK symbol.
This is what the Commonwealth Observer Group report had to say:
“In the North, there was also considerable evidence of multiple voting, impersonation, underage voting and intimidation of party workers and voters. A voter in the North claimed she had voted five times and boasted `my work is done for the day.’ Another voter, also in the North, boasted that he had voted 25 times. In the North groups of young men were seen outside polling stations and political party offices with many poll cards in their hands. Observers saw one man soliciting polling cards and heard him claim `they’re not checking.’ Many ballot boxes in the North were seen by our Team to bear the symbol and name of the [ITAK]. Officials `nodded through’ voters even though their names were not on the list. Attempts to remove the indelible ink were organised on a large scale… At many polling stations agents were present from only one party… ”
The CMEV had a detailed report of the polling centres where the malpractices took place. In Manipai, for instance, only ITAK polling agents were present in 33 polling centres. In Point Pedro, the CMEV monitors noted “large-scale impersonation” by the TNA. In Kopai, they saw “a large group” of young and old people removing ink from their fingers and handing out polling cards. And so on.
In spite of the rigging, the EPDP managed to win one of the nine seats in the peninsula, a tiny hint of the disaffection among people with the LTTE over its conduct — in particular its extortionary ways — in the months since the ceasefire.
The CMEV urged the Election Commissioner to annul the election in the entire Jaffna district and order a re-poll. In the Indian election, the Election Commission took the extreme step of countermanding the election in Chapra, Bihar, after considering the overwhelming evidence of rigging and intimidation of voters in that constituency.
In Sri Lanka, the Election Commissioner is admittedly not as powerful as his Indian counterpart but he has the power to order re-polling where he deems it necessary. Inexplicably, he chose not to exercise this power in respect of Jaffna. This even after the powers of his office have been augmented by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution under which he is vested with the duty and responsibility of acting independently to ensure a free and fair election.
As in India, Sri Lankan courts are barred by the Constitution (17th Amendment) from interfering with the electoral process once the election has been notified and this is to ensure that the democratic process is not disrupted by frivolous legislation. Therefore, it rests entirely on the Election Commissioner to act as the umpire, provide a level-playing field, and blow the whistle where warranted. Otherwise, those with legitimate complaints must necessarily wait until after the election to approach the courts. Again, as in India, courts can take years to settle election petitions. The Sri Lankan Election Commissioner clearly abdicated his role as the umpire insofar as the elections in Jaffna were concerned.
There are other issues that the fiasco has raised that Sri Lanka needs to address in order to prevent it from happening again.
Of these, a key issue is that of the outdated electoral rolls in the Jaffna peninsula, which carry the names of 650,000 people. Unlike in the rest of Sri Lanka, the Jaffna voters’ list has not been updated since 1981. Over half the voters on the list are dead, have gone abroad or have been displaced internally by the two decade-long conflict. This flawed list has been misused in successive elections.
Sri Lankan election law does not require voters to carry any identity document to the polling booth except their polling cards. The polling card is not a photo I-D. With the outdated voters’ list and the evidently easy access to the polling cards of the missing voters on that list, elections in Jaffna are tailor-made for impersonation.
A parliamentary select committee on electoral reforms set up in 2003 considered the Election Commissioner’s representation that it should be made mandatory for voters to produce the National Identity Card (NIC), a photo I-D, to prove their identity. But until all Sri Lankans, especially the Indian Tamils in the tea estates of central Sri Lanka, have access to the NIC, introducing such a rule may cut many eligible voters out of exercising their franchise altogether.
The select committee also witnessed a demonstration of two Indian brands of electronic voting machines that India has used successfully. The EVM would certainly help to eliminate multiple voting and the mass impersonation that Jaffna witnessed in this election but it would have to be greatly modified for Sri Lanka’s complex mix of proportional representation and preferential voting.
In any case, these measures must go hand-in-hand with the updating of the voters’ list in Jaffna. So far, all Tamil political parties, including the EPDP, have resisted attempts to revise the rolls. The reason: a reduction in the number of registered voters implies a parallel reduction in the number of parliamentary seats allotted to the Jaffna electoral division. But ultimately there can be no escape from such revision. A clean electoral list is a fundamental requirement for a free and fair election.
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