The election monitoring group Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) has requested Sri Lanka’s Elections Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake for carbon copies of the result sheets issued at each counting centers of the presidential election held on January 26th.
CaFFE said they have made three requests so far for the copies of election results but have not received any response from the Election Commissioner yet.
“This is the third letter we are sending him because we have received no response for the previous two,” the director of CaFFE Keerthi Thennakoon said.
Thennakoon complained that the group was not allowed to participate in the election process and therefore was not allowed to monitor the integrity of the election.
CaFFE was not accredited by the Election Commissioner to monitor the January 26th presidential elections. Only People’s Action for Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL) and Center for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) were the two local groups accredited by the Commissioner.
Both PAFFREL and CMEV however had no complaints regarding the integrity of the vote counting process and election results despite many complaints recorded by them on pre-poll violence.
Thennakoon charging that party representatives at some counting centers had not received copies of the results of the recently concluded presidential election asked the Elections Commissioner to immediately send the copies of the total votes polled at the counting centers to their representatives. (LankaPage.com)