Sri Lankan voting ends amidst more polls violations, violence

[TamilNet, Thursday, 08 April 2010, 11:58 GMT]
Voting at Thursday’s Sri Lanka’s Parliamentary Elections ended on schedule at 4.00 pm local time as independent monitors placed the voter turn out to between 50 to 55 percent. Keerthi Tenakoon with the Campaign for Free and fair Elections (CaFFE) said the maximum average was around 55 per cent in almost all parts of the country including the North and East, an all-time low when compared with the 62 per cent turn out at the recently concluded Presidential Elections in January this year.

The Election Commissioner’s Office refused to comment on the voter turnout until the final count is completed in the next two days.

Meanwhile some 115 election-related incidents were reported from throughout the country on Elections Day the bulk of it being the violation of elections laws, mainly from the pro-government candidates, Mr. Tenakoon said.

He added that the opposition polling agents had been driven away from several booths while the police did very little to arrests the trend.