Thousands of monitors to ensure free and fair polls

Intense rivalry may lead to clashes in some areas; Even hate songs broadcasted on loudspeakers

Election monitoring groups have planned to deploy more observers to monitor intra- party rivalry on election day August 5.

Monitoring officials said they had identified the districts where intra-party hostility was expressed among candidates, and therefore they would focus more on those areas, as they feared there might be hostilities.

Manjula Gajanayake, National Coordinator of the Centre for Monitoring Election Violence ( CMEV) said there had been an increase of hate speech among different party members. He said hate speech drove people towards physical reactions therefore they would carry out more observations.

“So far there have been no major violent incidents, but we are vigilant. We witness the internal struggle among candidates and observed an increased amount of hate speeches made,” he said.

Mr Gajanayake said they would deploy about 2500 election monitors at selected polling stations. Apart from that the CMEV had deployed about 1000 short term monitoring teams with field coordinators.

“We have also planned to deploy a mobile observer group of about 100 disabled personnel to check on the facilities provided to disabled voters,” he said.

Mr Gajanayake said they would also use about 175 mobile vehicles for election monitoring.

He said they would monitor election law violations through digital, print and social media in nine districts by dividing their staff and observers into nine teams.

According to him the CMEV has detected 835 election law violations from March 02 to July 30. Most of the violations had taken place in the Badulla, Kurunegala and Anuradhapura districts.

The violations included illegal campaigning, use of posters or cutouts and violations of health and safety guidelines.

Meanwhile, another monitoring group, the Peoples Action Front for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) has also deployed long term and short term monitors countrywide.

PAFFREL's Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi said they had deployed about 325 long term election monitors to carry out their observation during the past month. He said PAFFREL's district coordinators were fluent in Sinhala and Tamil.

They had also deployed about 1000 monitors to check on postal voting. Mr Hettiarachchi said PAFFREL would deploy about 260 mobile vehicles for monitoring work.

They would concentrate on areas such as Nawalapitiya, Puttalam, Ku rune gala, K andy and Hambantota, as these area candidates had got involved in intense rivalry and there was a possibility of violence.

The PAFFREL chief also said they would continue to keep on monitoring the post-election situation until two weeks after the polls.

Ahamaed Manas Makeen, Executive Director of the Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) said they would be deploying about 2200 mobile monitors. About 80 cars and vans would be used to carry out monitoring work.

Mr Makeen said they had identified 15 areas that could potentially be at risk of election related violence, and they would focus more on such areas. These included Potuvil, Akkaraipattu and Saindamarudu. These areas had the worst cases of hate speeches. Even hate songs were sung using loudspeakers.

The CaFFE chief said they were also concerned about the safety of the ballot boxes as they would remain in counting centres until the counting was carried out the next day.

"We wrote to the Election Commission to allow us to monitor counting centres but we have not received a reply. If we are granted permission, we are even prepared to ensure the safety of the ballot boxes," he said.