Sunday, May 11, 2008

Provincial Council Elections and related issues

The election for the Eastern Provincial Council has been concluded.

I have long taken a dim view of these Provincial Councils: all they do is add another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to an already inefficient administrative system. If anyone knows what value the provincial councils add to the public let me know. As far as I can see they are little more than vehicles for the lining of the pockets of corrupt politicians. In my opinion we should abolish the damned provincial councils, simplify the administrative work and distribute the remaining administrative powers between the centre and the municipalities of the towns and villages concerned, with resultant savings in administrative costs and the cost of running elections. If anyone has figures for the cost of the election, please let me know.

On the subject of the election itself, The Sunday Observer reported that "No major incidents were reported by the three Returning Officers of the three districts except for unconfirmed allegations levelled by two anti-government election monitoring organisations. But the main opposition UNP has made several unsubstantiated allegations of vote rigging."

From the tone of the writing it appears that only people questioning things are the opposition who don't matter and anti-government monitoring bodies who matter still less. One monitoring body has endorsed the election and is officially seen to be independent.

The report goes on to state that "The LTTE had resorted to various terror acts to intimidate and keep voters away from polling booths".

So the LTTE appears to be active again in the East. We are left to wonder if they re-infiltrated the cleared areas or whether they were actually cleared out as thoroughly as previously claimed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

GOSL says they liberated the East , but they also say the Pilleyan group needs to carry arms because they are threatened by the LTTE :S .