Delay in announcing results and other travails of Polls Chief

Just days before the local polls, the Election Commission told Sri Lankans that results would be announced early, as early as 7.30 pm in local authorities with lesser number of voters. Alas, the first result did not arrive till after 12.15 a. m. on Sunday. The Commission, constitutionally empowered to be an independent body, had a message posted on its website. See screenshot of the web page:

The announcement, however, does not say who blundered leading to the receipt of a scanned document?

Instead, Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya told a news conference he had not been “influenced by politicians” to delay the results.

In the lead- up to the 2018 Local Government Elections, the Elections Commission (EC) had been conducting an intense awareness campaign to inform voters that on election day, they should exercise their franchise by marking only an ‘X’ on the ballot paper next to the party of their choice. Despite all its best efforts, however, a considerable number of ballots had to be rejected because voters had not followed this simple instruction.

EC Chairman Deshapriya gave vent to his frustrations over the matter at a media briefing on Wednesday, saying no matter how many times the EC had conveyed the message, a large number of ‘Pandithayas’ had still not followed it.

“We had ballots being marked with the number 1 or some other symbol. Some people had even drawn a heart shape,” he revealed. All such votes were rejected. This had led to some angry scenes at certain counting centres, where party representatives who were present had argued over the legality of such ballots, if they saw that the ballots had been cast for their party.

The age-old practice had been that if a voter marks ‘1’ or a ‘ ’ or any indication to clearly show the intent of the voter’s preference, it is accepted as a valid vote. A ‘ ’ might indicate the voter loves the candidate, but it might be stretching the argument. Considering the number of women voters, and film stars in the fray it is not surprising. On the other hand, such a vote could be a protest vote.

What was surprising, though, was the high percentage of valid votes, with some councils hitting 85 percent of the registered number of votes. This is positively surprising.

The Election Commission Chairman’s other comments also raised eyebrows. One was that his Commission is not responsible for releasing the overall results of the LG elections to the media. If it was not through the media how the citizenry was to know the overall results was not explained. He merely said the political parties would have known the results from the polling centres. The problem is, even a week after the poll the ‘king (or queen) voter’ the custodian of which the Commission so steadfastly claimed to be, continues to be in the dark about who won and who lost, especially in the bigger councils.

And then, Mr. Deshapriya who claimed copyright on the women’s quota and derided others for infringing on what was their authorship, this week complained of the headache the quota was causing in constituting the councils.