PC polls: Poll monitors to seek legal assistance
All the election monitoring bodies expecting to seek legal assistance if the Review Committee on Delimitation Report headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe failed to produce its report to Parliament before October 28, Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE) said.
A five-member Committee, headed by Premier Wickremesinghe was appointed by the Speaker to review the Delimitation Commission Report on Provincial Councils (PC) on August 28, 2018.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, CAFFE Executive Director Keerthi Tennakoon said the Review Committee had only met twice since it was appointed and added even in those two occasions it had not discussed any worthwhile matters in terms of finalizing the Delimitation Report.
“It seems that the Government uses all possible tricks to postpone the PC elections and makes it a practice to neglect elections,” Tennakoon said. “We, as election monitoring bodies met the officials of the Elections Commission (EC) where they said the only option left open was to seek legal assistance if the Government had failed to hold elections,” Tennakoon added.
Tennakoon said Provincial Councils such as Eastern, Sabaragamuwa and North Central had been already dissolved and added the terms of North, North Western and Central PCS were to expire by October 28.
“It means that six of nine Provincial Councils would be malfunctioning from October 28,” he added.