CMEV reports malpractice in postal voting in Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Saturday, 27 March 2010, 05:22 GMT]
The Centre for Monitoring Election Violence (CMEV) reported several instances of illegal canvassing near postal voting centres located in government buildings as postal voting concluded in Sri Lanka Friday. Field monitors of the CMEV reported an incident in which two women claimed to be representatives of Basil Rajapakse, brother of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who is contesting in the Gampaha district on the UPFA ticket, collected details of individual postal voters at Mirigama Education Office.

They had verbally threatened a CMEV monitors who questioned them about their behavior, CMEV claimed.

CMEV sources added that in several areas in the south cutouts of ruling party candidates were pasted on walls of government offices where postal voting took place thus violating the election laws.