Polling in LTTE areas to be discussed with truce monitors

[TamilNet, Saturday, 14 February 2004, 15:42 GMT]
Sri Lanka’s Commissioner of Elections Saturday told Government Agents and Assistant Elections Commissioners from the Northeast that he would discuss with the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission and the Sri Lankan Government’s Peace Secretariat about arrangements to enable more than two hundred thousand Tamils in regions that are not under Colombo’s control to vote in the general elections on 2 April. Sri Lankan armed forces prevented Tamils in these areas from voting in the Parliamentary elections of December 2001.

The officials from the northeast districts explained to Commissioner of elections, Mr. Dayananda Dissanayaka, that it is not at all possible for more than two hundred thousand people to cast their votes in far flung polling booths within the eight hours allowed for voting on the day of the elections.

Mr. Dissanayaka told them that he would discuss the issue with the Sri Lankan government’s Peace Secretariat and the SLMM on Monday. He told the officials from the northeast that he would see them again on Tuesday with the responses of the SLMM and the GOSL’s Peace Secretariat.

Under Sri Lanka’s election laws Colombo can cluster polling booths of an area at one place for if there are sufficient security reasons to do so.

Therefore hundreds of polling booths in many parts of the northeast have been clustered in all elections since 1989 in places very far from the areas where they should have normally been – close to the voters.

Clustered polling booths were, as a rule, set up in places close to Sri Lankan military camps near the lines of control separating areas held by the Liberation Tigers and the Government of Sri Lanka.

This meant Tamil voters in LTTE held areas had to spend long hours travelling to the place where their respective polling stations were clustered, but also had to wait until the Sri Lankan armed forces at entry points checked them and allowed them to proceed. Under Sri Lanka’s draconian Emergency Regulations the military could stop anyone from entering a Sri Lankan government controlled area at its discretion.

None of the Sri Lanka army entry points on the lines of control between the regions held by Colombo and the Liberation Tigers have the capacity to check more than five thousand persons the space of eight hours. Government Agents in the northeast also point out the fact that it is humanly impossible to transport even 10 percent of the voting population in LTTE held areas to the clustered polling stations outside the regions held by the Liberation Tigers in the Vanni and the east.

There are about eighty six thousand voters in the Mullaithivu District and more than fifty thousand in Kilinochchi District. The Liberation Tigers control both districts. There are around six thousand voters in the Maruthankerni Division of Jaffna. This is also held by the LTTE.

There are seventy nine thousand voters in the LTTE controlled parts of the Batticaloa District and twelve thousand votes in those areas of Southern Trincomalee held by the Tigers.

Tamil politicians argue that Tamils have a moral/legal right to exercise the right of self-determination because Colombo has systematically deprived them of the fundamental right to vote.

“Even the Sri Lankan constitution clearly acknowledges that sovereignty is inalienably vested in the people and is realised also through the exercise of the right of franchise. But on many occasions the Government of Sri Lanka has, in a deliberate, premeditated manner, deprived whole communities of Tamils the right to vote. Therefore we will have the moral right to realise our sovereignty independently if the Sri Lankan government denies us the franchise again,” said Mr. Selvam Adaikalanathan, ex Tamil National Alliance MP for the Vanni and leader of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.

Thousands of voters in his electorate were prevented from voting by the Sri Lanka Army in general elections in 2000 and 2001.