PAFFREL Commends Holding of NPC Poll

The People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), one of the NGOs monitoring the Northern, North-Western and Central Provincial Council polls

The People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), one of the NGOs monitoring the Northern, North-Western and Central Provincial Council polls, said yesterday that it was commendable that the people of the North were afforded the opportunity to exercise their franchise at a PC election after three decades.

PAFFREL Executive Director Rohan Hettiarchchi told a media conference in Colombo that his organisation had detailed about 3,500 stationary observers, 750 mobile observers, 116 at Divisional Secretariat level and eight international observers.

He pointed out that altogether there had been 117 complaints, with a majority related to assault. The rest was mainly about threats and attacks on election offices. There were 36 assault cases, which had led to the hospitalisation of 43 individuals. Twenty were from the North-Western Province and 16 from the Central province. Only eight incidents were from the North. Intra-party violence was common and there was a rising trend of clashes in the Kandy district of the Central Province. Out of the 17 cases of threats and intimidation, seven had been reported from the Central Province. Such cases reported from the Kandy district alone stood at four. There was a similar rising trend in attacks on movable property. The total number of violent incidents reported from the Central Province was 54. It was double the number of cases reported from the North-Western Province, from where two bomb attacks had been reported.

He added that in the Central Province three houses and 19 vehicles were damaged. In the North-Western province three houses and two vehicles and in the Northern Province seven houses and six vehicles had been damaged.

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