His Excellency Ban Ki Moon
Secretary General of the United Nations

The Peoples’ Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) ), the leading
leftist political party and the third main political party in Sri Lanka presents this
report on ‘Undemocratic acts of the government led by the President Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
Suppression of the democratic rights of the people and violation of human rights by the
President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime goes several years back. However, these matters
have been discussed in various fora including at UN. In this report we present incidents
took place in the Presidential Election 2010 and thereafter.

Presidential Election 2010

According to our experience in last two months the Presidential Election 2010 is not free
and fair. Following information and views of the Peoples’ Liberation Front on
Presidential Election 2010, will help you to understand how the incident took place in the
election process violate the law of the country and election regulations and disturb the
opinion of the voters.
According to our observations the main obstacle that eliminated a level playing field for
all the parties or candidates contesting at an election is especial privileges enjoyed by the
ruling political party. Following factors eliminated the basic conditions that are essential
for a free and fair election.
• Use of state power to influence public opinion, use of state resources and
properties in the political campaign of the ruling party.
• Political interference into state service and the police those are responsible for
holding the election.
• Use of state media organisations solely for the propaganda purposes of the
political party as well as malicious mud slinging campaigns against the opponent
political parties and candidates.
In this Presidential Election 23 candidates handed over their nominations and one of them
was rejected and finally 22 candidates contested at the election. However, the competition
was between only two of them; President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the candidate of the United
Peoples Freedom Alliance and the Common candidate of opposition political parties Gen
(Retired) Sarath Fonseka.

Use of state power, resources and properties:
In this Presidential Election the UPFA candidate is privileged with executive power
vested on him as well as other privileges enjoyed by his cabinet and MPs, the powers of
all provincial councils and the majority of local authorities.
UPFA is using all the powers, resources and properties boldly on the presidential
candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa's election campaign violating election law, administrative
regulations and financial regulations in the country.
Therefore the other candidates were discriminated.
The police have failed to maintain law and order in the pre-election period and as a result
election violence escalated. Violation of election law continued and the police turned a
blind eye on them.
Especially the police did not remove illegal propaganda materials of the Presidential
candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa and large billboards, banners and posters were displayed all
over the country.
According to election regulations and government administrative regulations engagement
of government officials in political activities in their official capacity is illegal. However,
this law was violated by the top government officials including the highest ranked
government officer the Secretary to the President.
Also the Secretary of Defence, the Secretary of Highways, Provincial Governors and high ranked military officers violated the law and directly engaged in the political campaign of the candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Presidential candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa used his power and state resources to gather government officials for campaigning. He summoned those officials and other social groups to Temple Trees the official residence of the prime minister (now used by the president). From the day the election was declared hundreds of thousand people belonging to various social groups and government officials have been summoned for political meetings at Temple Trees and other presidential houses in Kandy and Anuradhapura.
State money used to treat these people and wide publicity was given for those meetings
using state and private media and these were held as officials meetings of the President.

Election violence
The election was violent from the day it was declared and up to 22.01.2010 over 885 complaints (incidents) related to election violence and violation of election regulations have been reported (Sources: Police, Network for Election Monitoring of Intellectual for Human Rights (NEM IHR)). Other election monitoring agencies have also received similar numbers of complaints. There are 589 pre-election violence including killing of four persons.
The election violence become more organised in the final days of the election though they were sporadic at the beginning. At the beginning there were mainly clashes between the supporters of the main candidates and most incidents were related to propaganda activities. At most occasions the victims were the supporters or activists of the candidate
Sarth Fonseka.
Police has miserably failed to maintain law and order and they being biased towards the ruling party politicians have also led to escalation of violence. In some instances police has arrested opposition party supporters who were engaged in lawful propaganda campaign.

Abuse of state media
Abuse of state media for the election campaign of the candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa has created extremely unfair situation for the other candidates. There are two TV media organisations two radio stations that have several channels in all three languages and daily and weekly newspapers in the three main languages Sinhala, Tamil and English owned by the state. All these media are being used directly for the propaganda of the candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa and malicious campaign against candidate Sarath Fonseka.
Abuse of state media started even prior to the declaration of the election and continues through out the period ignoring protests from political parties, election monitoring organisations, religious leaders and other concerned civil society organisations.
Government has totally disregarded directives of the Election commissioner. The election commissioner issued guidelines for all media organisations to follow during the election period and the objective was to stop biased propaganda carried out by mainly the state media. However, state media organisations overlooked those guidelines and continued their biased media practice. After several warnings Election Commissioner appointed a competent authority into state media. However, the state media organisations did not follow his instruction and continued biased propaganda.
The Supreme Court too ordered the state media organisations to follow Election
Commissioner's instructions and pointed out that under the 17th amendment to the constitution the Election Commissioner has the rights to direct state media organisations on their conduct during an election period to ensure a free and fair election. However, state media did not follow even Supreme Court orders and continued their biased media practice and campaigned for the candidate Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Postal voting
Postal voting was held on January 12 and 13 and there were 28 incidents that can be considered as serious. A large number of members in security forces were not privileged to cast their vote in the election due to various reasons. Some have not received postal votes although they correctly applied. In some cases the higher officials had not arranged or given them opportunity to cast their vote timely. In some police stations (Rattota, Tangalle, Wellawaya, Nawagamuwa, Mountlavenia) the senior officers had forced junior officers to show their ballet papers after they marked their vote. Few reports received about fraudulent voting. The transparency of the postal voting is questionable and how did the ballet papers receive to the District Returning Officer, possibility of rigging of postal votes by opening the sealed envelopes have been raised. These matters were not raised in early elections and after the presidential election 2010 suspicions are raising on whole election process.

Election day and the previous day
On January 25, the day before the election there were reports related to forcibly collection of identity cards of the people who were supported to opposition candidate in Kalutara, Gampol, Nawalapitiya and Balangoda areas. The objective was preventing them from casting their vote.
Reports related to fraudulent polling cards, fraudulent ballot papers were received.
Information received on fraudulent ballot boxes and issue of fraudulent identity cards aiming at vote rigging. On January 23 a Navy vehicle N.H 6284 that was transporting defamatory posters against opposition candidate Sarath Fonseka was arrested by the Pothuhera police. This incident proved the claims that vote rigging was planning using security forces.
As the incidents took place in the election day are considered there was no conducive environment for a free and fair election in several regions. From the beginning of the day election violence reported from several regions. There were incidents such as firing, bomb blasts, assaults and threatening. The objective of these violence was to avert the people who supported the opposition parties coming into polling stations. In many places supporters and the polling agents of the candidate Sarath Fonseka were threatened and dispelled.
Illegal propaganda campaigns were carried out around poling centres all over the country and our monitors have reported 491 such incidents that can be considered as seriously disturbed the election process.
The police had not attempt to prevent unlawful activities that affect the election process.
Especially they turned blind eye on illegal propaganda as well as violence against opposition political parties by the ruling party politicians or supporters.
The details of the incidents took place o the election day are as follows.
Incident Number of cases reported Firing and bomb attacks 09 Abductions 02
Chase away of polling agents 24 Chase away of voters 28 Fraudulent voting 07
Threatening and assault 42 Total 112

As far as the incidents reported from the South is concerned, they didn’t significantly affect the final results of the election. However, incidents took place in the North caused serious impact and a large number of people were prevented from voting.
Serious incidents were reported from Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Vavunia districts. Bomb attacks, shooting and burning of tires were used to terrify the people in these areas and prevent their voting. Four heavy blasts were reported and these incidents seriously disturbed the election process.
Apart from violence some well planned programs of the ruling party seriously affected final result of the election. Government did not provide adequate transport facilities for the people in the North to go to cast their vote. Government had agreed with the election commissioner to provide transport facilities for the people to travel cluster polling centres established in Kilinochchi district. Election commissioner has instructed district Returning Officers to provide adequate transport facilities. People had to travel there from Jaffna or Vavunia where it took several hours to reach. It is clear that this is a planned sabotage that prevented them from voting. There were over 90,000 registered voters in the Kilinochchi district. But only six buses were provided them and as a result only 6566 got the opportunity of casting their vote.

Programs had been planned to avert voting at the displaced camps in the Vavunia as well.
There were around 90,000 persons eligible for voting in the IDP camps. However, only around 17,000 of them got the opportunity of voting at the presidential election. Majority of them did not get the opportunity to cast their vote due to several reasons. Firstly they had to apply for voting in advance and most of the IDPs had not applied.
Some of those who registered couldn’t cast their vote as they did not have any valid identity card. Identity card issued for IDPs, the only identity card that most of them had, had not been accepted for voting. The election commissioner ordered to accept IPD identity card as a valid Identity card for voting in the afternoon of the election day.
However, those who came for voting in the morning were discriminated.
On the election day there were long queues at polling centres in the IDP camps and all the people irrespective of who have registered or not, having a valid identity card or not were queued. By this process those who were entitled for vote (registered and having a valid ID card) were prevented voting. If only those who were entitled for voting were called for queues all of them might get the opportunity of voting. All these incidents clearly demonstrate that the voting right of the people in the North was purposely violated.

Post election period
The election results were announced from January 27 morning and from the evening of the day a wave of post election violence started against opposition party activists and supporters. Three persons were killed and over 20 persons were injured from post election violence.
Processions of the victorious UPFA politicians, organizers and supports were started all parts of the country and those who were engaged in the processions and rallies started attacks on supporters and activists of the opposition parties. Police failed in controlling post election violence and establish law and order. The responsible persons for violence including killings have not been arrested. In some cases police has arrested the victims and released the accused.
The security forces' on 09.02.2010 arrested Gen Sarath Fonseka from his office building late at night and dragged by his hands and feet. The charges it has mentioned concern allegations that he dabbled in politics while still head of the army and the armed forces, before his retirement last November.
These acts are illegal and opposition political parties have already challenged this move at the Supreme Court.
The suppression of media is continue in Sri Lanka and one journalist is missing from few days before the election and the editor of Lanka Sinhala weekly has been arrested and detain under emergency regulations.
The thugs of the government and police brutally attacked protestors on 10.02.2009 at several cities around the island. All peaceful demonstrations tagged against the abduction of General Sarath Fonseka.
Meanwhile government has gazeted five open prisons that can be detain over 12,000 prisoners. This is a surprising move and after defeating the terrorism there is no such need of new prisons in the country. We suspect that this move is aimed at suppressing the opposition political party and the government is heading towards a dictatorship.
Also we have information that the government is planning to block internet and proscribe news webs on the internet. By this way the government is trying to make an iron curtain to hide its antidemocratic activities. Number of IT experts have brought to the country to implement a ban on websites.

We expect your intervention to reverse this antidemocratic move of the government and ensure the freedom of the people.

Srilankawebmaster, 2010-02-22 08:42, Hit : 742

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