“Sri Lanka government plans to bring 80 Sinhalese officers from South to serve as Junior Polling Officers in the forthcoming Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election while there are sufficient Tamil speaking government officers in Jaffna to conduct the election; it is obvious that the government intends to win the election by rigging as it had done in the East,” Suresh Premachandran, Jaffna District Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarian, said in a press meet held in the TNA Thamizharasuk Kadchchi (TK) office in Jaffna. TNA chief candidate Mudiyappu Remedias participated in the press meet.
“The government plans to bring down a contingent of policemen too from the South to engage in election duties despite the presence of more than 40,000 Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers and policemen in Jaffna peninsula and this raises serious doubts of a free and fair election,” Premachandran further said.
“We will be requesting the Election Commissioner to allow our agents to accompany the ballot boxes taken from the polling booths for counting,” he said.
“We will also insist on the presence of the International Monitoring Committee during the election,” Premachandran said.
He further said that SLA in Jaffna are engaged in gathering information about the persons who support TNA and TK with a view to intimidate them and that it is the SLA which is going to conduct the JMC election in order to secure victory for the government.
On being asked whether the accusations raised by TNA and TK are due to the fact of their impending defeat as Minister Douglas Devananda had commented recently, Premachandran replied that victory and defeat are natural in an election but it is of great importance that the election should be democratic.
“Government is making much publicity of opening the A9 route to public use and the lifting of fishing restrictions but the people of Jaffna fully well know that it was the government itself which imposed these restrictions on them,” Premachandran said.
“Our main purpose is to expose the efforts of the government to rig the election to secure JMC by hook or crook. But TNA, TK will definitely capture majority of the seats in JMC,” he added.
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