Tuesday, 16 December 2014 01:28
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The Election Department and election monitoring organisation People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) have decided to bring 104 international election monitors to observe the upcoming presidential polls.
Accordingly, 35 observers have been invited by PAFFREL and the Department of Elections has invited 69 observers to monitor the 8 January presidential election.
The international monitors will be from the South Asian Election Monitoring Forum, the South Asian Election Monitoring Association, the Commonwealth Association and Asian Election Monitoring Network.
Monitors are also expected to be called from the European Election Monitoring Association.
They are slated to arrive in Sri Lanka on 27 December to monitor campaigning and voting, PAFFREL said.
Meanwhile, Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya has offered six election monitoring bodies the opportunity to place observers at 300 counting centres but he has not outlined how 300 counting centres from a total of 1,200 will be determined.
However, the poll monitors have not accepted the election commissioner’s offer, according to the election monitoring group Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) since the poll monitors want access to all counting centres.
