by Dr. Victor Rajakulendran; Australia, published March 15, 2004
Are some of the Tamils going to be prevented from exercising their franchise once more?
There are only 17 days left for the parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka, scheduled to be held on the 2nd of April, the 3rd such vote in the last 4 years. Violence and vote rigging marred all these three previous elections. The European Union Election Monitoring Mission (EUEMM) that monitored the last elections made some recommendations to the government to make future elections free and fair in Sri Lanka. Another EUEMM is already in Sri Lanka on the invitation of the Sri Lankan Election Commissioner, Dayananda Dissanayaka. They have already written in public to the Election Commissioner criticising the authorities for failing to implement those recommendations.
If this is the situation in general, Tamils in the NorthEast are facing more problems in exercising their franchise. This is because a large track of territory in the NorthEast province is under the control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and is referred to by the Sri lankan government as ‘uncleared areas.’ During the elections in times of war, the Election Commissioner felt he could not set up voting stations in the uncleared areas. Therefore, he decided to cluster all the voting stations of the uncleared areas in the government-controlled areas adjacent to the ‘non-liberated’ areas and these were called cluster booths. People living in the uncleared areas had to go through a government security checkpoint, manned by the Security Forces, to be cleared for voting in these cluster booths.
During the last general elections, Tamils from the uncleared areas were not allowed by the security forces to enter the area where the cluster booths were set up, and cast their votes. For example, more than 30% of the voters in the Vanni district were prevented from exercising their franchise. A similar situation prevailed in the other Tamil Districts namely, Jaffna, Trincomalle, Batticaloa and Amparai districts. Some of these affected people of Vanni filed a case in the courts against the Security Forces chiefs of the area for this violation and won and the Security Forces chiefs were ordered to pay compensation.
The General Election to be held on the 2nd of April is the first in the last 20 years to be held in a no-war situation. Therefore, people in the uncleared areas are looking forward to exercise their franchise after a lapse of 20 years. Moreover, Tamils are intending to use this election as a referendum to show the Sri Lankan authorities and the International Community their position regarding the armed struggle of the Tamils (LTTE) and how they would like the Sri Lankan government to re-commence the negotiating process and progress forward.
To facilitate this process of people in the Tamil areas exercising their franchise the way they would like to, the LTTE offered to open up the areas under their control to set up polling stations there. Since the cease-fire agreement does not allow enemy forces to enter armed each others’ territory, Sri Lankan Security forces cannot provide security for these polling stations. However, the LTTE has stated that the area is already secure and if international and local monitors monitor these polling stations, it is adequate to conduct a free and fair election in these areas.
News emerging from Colombo suggests that the Election Commissioner is on the verge of deciding not to allow polling stations to be set up in the uncleared areas and, instead, to have cluster polling stations in the no-man zones which separate the government-controlled areas from the LTTE-controlled areas. This allows room for mischievous elements to create an incident on the morning of Election Day that could prompt the security forces to prevent people from the LTTE-controlled areas entering the no-man zone in such a large number. This could prevent these people from exercising their franchise as in the last election. Another problem for these people to exercise their franchise is the logistical problem of providing transport for all these people to get to the polling stations from their remote areas within the span of that 8 hours the polling stations are kept open.
Therefore, it is prudent that, even at this last hour, everyone in the international community who is interested in a fair election and in the peace process of Sri Lanka to intervene to ensure that the Tamils are not denied once again their right to exercise their franchise and determine their own future.
Sydney, Australia