A reinforcement of the earlier report relating to breaking all the rules with regard to holding free and fair elecions in the North

The elections due to be held on Saturday for about 65 local councils include most of the Northern Province, which is sparsely populated and all parties other than the state having little funds to fight the elections.

It is also true that there has been a lot of intimidation by the state using the resident Army to instill fear into the populace. People therefore do not act and react in a normal way when faced with such threats. It is also a fact that due to the distances to the polling stations, and the lack of identity cards for many of the people, they are reluctant to go a long distance and great expense and be told they are not registered or that someone else has voted in their name. No one is investigating this problem.

We must therefore alert the elections commissioner who appears to be a reasonable person, and somewhat enlightened when compared with the previous people who held this office, to act in the best interests of the position to conduct the election in as fair a manner as possible and report to the world the most blatant types of violations.

If he has the confidence to act in the best interests of the country and not to safeguard his position, then we may see some hope in the future. One must remember the President cannot sack the Chief Justice or the Elections Commissioner, though in this case the Chief Justice is in his pocket, and even the spouse of the Chief Justice of Sri Lanka is a Head of a corporation and therefore her position is somewhat seen to be compromised. Parliament however can by a simple majority such ether of these and as the Parliament is in the President's pocket, there is nothing the average mortal in Sri Lanka can  do to prevent this type of imposition.

The effective outcome therefore is that most if not all the votes accruing to the Governing coalition received in the name of the EPDP Tamil faction of the ruling Alliance can amount to a hill of beans. This of course is no deterrent to the government not to carry out their plan with the North, which appears still to subjugate the people living there. If we are to avoid a situation again of a spontaneous uprising and another bloodbath of our own citizenry, all people who are truly patriotic Sri Lankans must act against this truly unpatriotic rulers who in the name of patriotism is raping this country, deceiving its people, lying to get votes, and once they are counted have not compunction but to rigg in a mass scale to show a result completely at odds with reality.