Low voter turn out at Sri Lanka's local polls

Colombo: A low turn out and failure of the police to strictly enforce election laws marred Sri Lanka's local poll which concluded yesterday as the Marxists JVP battled to emerge as a stronger political group.

Election-weary Sri Lankans in most areas failed to turn up in the usual numbers and the election officials were expecting that the final turn out would be less than 65 per cent compared to the usual 75 to 80 per cent recorded during the last few elections.

The local candidates in their enthusiasm managed to get their supporters and relatives to turn up at polling booths, but most of the general public showed little interest in the poll.

Elections were held in 266 municipal, urban and village councils throughout the country, except in the northern and eastern parts and in selected areas where court cases have been filed where the nominations are in dispute.

Polling commenced at 7am and ended at 4pm in 8,829 polling booths where some 10.1 million voters are eligible to vote.

After five hours of voting by noon less than 35 per cent of those eligible to vote had turned up for polling though the normal turn out is around 50 per cent. Voters have faced as many as nine elections in the past eight years presidential, parliamentary, provincial and local polls. All the elections have an average campaigning period of three months each.

"Maybe the people are aware that they cannot make a major change through this election and also they have been spending too much of time on elections during the past few years," Upali Ratnayake, a spokesman for the local election monitoring group Pafrel, said.

He said that majority of the people have shown some interest in the elections because persons known to them or their relations are contesting elections. Election monitoring groups reported more than 100 incidents including cases of assault and intimidation.

ATTACK
Tamil Tigers fire at navy outpost

Tamil Tiger rebels in a boat fired at a Sri Lankan navy post in the port town of Trincomalee yesterday but retreated when the navy retaliated with gunfire, a navy spokesman said.

The incident comes ahead of a visit by Norwegian peace envoys next week. The navy suffered no casualties, but it was unclear if any of the rebels were hurt, said navy spokesman Commander D.K.P. Dassanayake.

- AP