Election violations and violence increasing, say polls monitoring bodies

With two weeks to go for the election the number of complaints relating to election violations and violence keep increasing.

The National Election Commission (NEC) as of November 1, has received 2540 complaints with reports of 2425 violations and 23 violent incidents.

The first week after nominations, beginning October 8, the NEC received 269 complaints of violence and violations. From then on an average of 750 incidents of violence and violations have been received every week.

Meanwhile last week the governors of five provinces have joined the SLPP fray openly supporting candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa. They have been charged of using state resources and funds allocated for local governments.

The election monitoring bodies PAFFREl and CMEV said that complaints have been made to the NEC to take action against the five governors who are blatantly violating the election law.

They said that governors A.J.M. Muzamil of the Western Province, Shan Wijayalal de Silva of the Eastern Province, Hemal Gunasekera of the Southern Province and Peshala Jayarathna o f North We s t e r n Province were openly participating in election related events and using social media pages to promote the SLPP candidate.

"They should at least give up their governorship until elections are over if they want to be in party politics," CMEV Executive Director, Manjula Gajanayake said.

A letter to this effect will be sent to President Maithripala Sirisena and SLPP chairman, he said.

Meanwhile PAFFREl said that since nominations there have been 24 incidents of violence and 11 people have been hospitalised. There have over 300 complaints in relation to electoral law and general law violations.