Rallies and campaigning end midnight

5 January 2015 04:06 am

The curtain will come down at midnight for the closely contested and extremely heated election propaganda campaigns for one of the most crucial and decisive Presidential Elections in the recent history of Sri Lanka.


A total of 19 candidates including the two main candidates, President Mahinda Rajapaksa and Common Opposition Candidate, Maithripala Sirisena are in the fray while 17 are from registered political parties and two are from independent groups for the Thursday’s Poll.


The two independent candidates are P.R.C. Anurudha Polgampola and I.M. Ilyaas.

 
A total of 15,044, 490 voters are eligible to vote at 12,021 Polling Stations island-wide and postal voting was held on December 23, 24 and 30.


The 17 political party candidates except the two main candidates are: Ven. Battaramulle Seelaratana Thera of Janasetha Peramuna, M.B.Thaminimulla of Okkoma Wasiyo Okkoma Rajawaru Sanvidanaya, Siritunga Jayasuriya from United Socialist Party, Pani Wijesiriwardana of Socialist Equality Party, Jayantha Kulatunga of the Eksath Lanka Maha Sabha Paksaya,  Wimal Geeganage from Sri Lanka National Front, Duminda Nagamuwa of the Progressive Socialist Front, Maulavi Ibrahim Mohamed of the United Peace Front, A.S.P Liyanage from Sri Lanka Labour Party, Sundharam Mahendran from Nava Samaja Party, K.A. Prasanna Priyankara of the Democratic National Movement, R.A.N. Ajith Rajapaksha from Our National Front, R.A. Sirisena from Patriotic National Front, R. Peduruarachci of Eksath Lanka Podujana Paksaya and Sarath Manmendra of Nava Sinhala Urumaya.


Additional Elections Commissioner U. Amaradasa told the Daily Mirror yesterday that nearly 200,000 officials had been deployed by the Elections Secretariat for election duty and 55 foreign observers from SAARC and South Asian Federation Election Monitoring had been deployed island wide to observe the election process.


Meanwhile, PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiatachci said one of the significant factors of this election was the increased incidences of election violence in comparison to 2010 Presidential Poll.


He said by yesterday, there were 740 incidents of election related violence recorded by PAFFREL. “173 of them were of serious nature and 62 victims of violence had been hospitalised,” he said.


Incidentally, this Presidential Election campaign was the shortest in election history as it ran only for 29 days. (Sandun A. Jayasekera)