5 August 2020 12:00 am
By Sandun A Jayasekera
In one of the crucial and decisive general elections in recent history, voters in Sri Lanka will elect 196 members to Parliament for the next five years in a hotly contested 53-day election campaign that ended on Sunday midnight.
Another 29 members will be selected through the national list making up the 225 member Parliament.
Nearly 7,452 candidates from 40 political parties and 313 independent groups will contest the elections from the 25 districts at the election being held under strict health guidelines.
The significance of today’s election is that the Election Commission (EC) was compelled to postpone the election twice because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament on March 2 with nominations to be handed over between March 12 and 19 and the new parliament to convene on May14 while the Supreme Court set aside eight FR petitions and 15 intervening petitions challenging the dissolution of Parliament and the fixing of election on June 20.
Meanwhile, voting will be held from 7.00 am to 5.00 pm today at 12,894 polling stations with 16,263,885 eligible voters.
Postal voting was held on June 13, 14, 15 and 16 and on 20 and 21 with some 705,505 public servants eligible to cast their vote.
Some 2, 759 counting centres have been set up including 453 postal vote counting centres at 160 polling divisions in the 25 electoral districts with the EC directing those undergoing self-quarantine to vote after 4.00 pm at their respective polling stations while those at quarantine centres will not be permitted to cast their vote.
The EC has deployed 300,000 public servants on election duty in addition to 10,000 health workers such as PHIs, Family Health Nurses and Doctors to ensure that all stakeholders would adhere to the health guidelines.
Some 69,000 policemen have also been deployed to maintain law and order during and after the poll while the STF and the armed forces will be on standby for any eventuality.
Another positive development at this election were the zero incidents of bloodshed and violence of a serious nature though however, PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi said about 2,300 incidents of election law violations had been reported by Sunday while more than 3,000 incidents election law violation had been reported by the social media up to yesterday.
He said PAFFREL had deployed 3,000 election monitors countrywide to ensure a free and fair election and that there would be no foreign election monitors at this election due to various logistical problems.