Legal action against election law violators, campaign relatively peaceful

With nearly 150 election law violators arrested within the past four weeks, Police have completed investigations into five of the incidents and forwarded reports to the Attorney General’s Department to take legal action.

The AG’s advice has been sought in cases involving the conduct of illegal political parades, three of them in Kandy, and one each in Avissawella and Gampaha, the Sunday Times learns.

The Kandy incident involves three candidates, two from the UNP and one from the UPFA.

Most of those arrested had been involved in cases such as physical altercations, vandalising property and putting up posters. Many are out on bail after being produced in court, a police officer said.

However, despite the large number of arrests, election monitoring groups say the campaign for the August 17 general elections has been less violent while the number of cases of violation of election laws was also low compared to the previous elections.

An Elections Department official said they had received more than 500 complaints, including three incidents of violence and 504 cases of election law violations.

The department had probed these complaints and would take action in cases where there was evidence of wrongdoing, he said.

A senior police officer said the Elections Department had given Rs. 75 million to the police to recruit people to remove posters and cutouts across the island.

“We received complaints of three assaults in the Kumburupitiya, Ratnapura and Hambantota areas. The other complaints relate to incidents of threats to officials, bribes and the misuse of state resources and state media,” an official said.

Yesterday the polls monitoring group People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections