This article is based on extracts from an ongoing study of the international Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy being conducted by Professors,K.M.de Silva, G.H.Peiris and S.W.R.de A.Samarasinghe

In the media coverage of events leading up to the parliamentary elections scheduled for 5 December 2001 there have been two sets of reports which, despite the significance of their possible implications, have not received the public attention they so obviously deserve. One of these, carried by the dailies about two weeks ago, referred to the detection by the police late one night of a ballot box being transported in a vehicle belonging to a state sector institution. The driver of the vehicle, its sole occupant at the time of the police detection, had been taken into custody for questioning, and subsequently released, evidently on the basis of an official explanation that the said ballot box had been obtained from the Elections Department for purposes of preliminary training of those who would be officiating at the forthcoming elections. The other story, published in several newspapers, referred to promotions granted during the past few weeks to a large number of persons serving in government schools, which would enable them to join the ranks of the public service from which those who would officiate either as Returning Officers (or at comparable levels of executive responsibility) would be selected for the polls. There has hitherto been no denial of the veracity of these reports.

The significance which we attach to these reports stems mainly from what we h ave come to know through a study conducted by us last year over a period of about eight months on the Presidential Election of December 1999. Our study entailed, inter alia, in-depth field investigations in a sample of 22 areas (most of which are coterminous with former parliamentary electorates) drawn from different parts of the country. The investigations took the form of: (a) a questionnaire-based survey involving about 2,100 voters, and (b) a series of ‘Focus Group’ discussions with an aggregate of about 400 participants. An interim report based upon this study has already been prepared and circulated. The final report on the study is to be published soon after the completion of our field investigations the concluding stages of which were interrupted by the parliamentary elections of last year and other political turbulences in the country.

Certain findings of our study point emphatically to the fact that electoral malpractices that have the effect of preventing the genuine expression of the will of the voters at an election are by no means restricted to various forms of politically engineered violence before and during the polls, and that malpractices and lapses on the part of the officialdom also contributed substantially to such deprivation of the people’s rights. Our study also indicates the possibility that connivance between the politician and the bureaucrat also has the capacity of thwarting the fundamental objectives of an election. Electoral violence has, of course, become so frequent in occurrence in Sri Lanka that a recapitulation of the violence associated with the presidential election of 1999 (on which our study focused) might not serve the purpose of generating public awareness regarding the dangers they are currently facing. However, in the context of the two news reports referred to above, it is our conviction that a useful purpose could, indeed, be served by publicizing certain findings from our study that relate to the general theme of administrative and organizational shortcomings and malpractices at the election. For the sake of brevity we present below sets of extracts from the report on our study without introductory or supplementary annotations.

Manipulation of Voter Registers

The register of voters compiled by the Election Commissioner’s Department with the assistance of the administrative hierarchy that extends down to the level of the Grama Niladhari is the basic document which defines the electorate, the registration as a voter being a mandatory requirement for a person to exercise the right to vote. The manipulation of these registers - preventing persons being duly registered, or surreptitious deletion of names from the register, or the entry of false names in the register - has, in the recent past, constituted one of the main pre-election rigging practices, carried out at the instigation of local-level leaders of political parties. The charge being made is that, coerced by such party activists, officers at the lower rungs of the administrative hierarchy falsify the voter registers, exercising whatever knowledge they possess on the political leanings of the voters in the communities in which they work so as to favour the party on behalf of which the pressure is applied. Commenting on this malpractice, the ‘Movement for Free and Fair Elections’ stated in its report that, while in the tenure of the previous government (1977-94) many were alleged to have been involved in planning large-scale manipulation of electoral lists "...(T)he present government, though highly critical of the role of grama niladharis when in opposition, hasn’t shown any enthusiasm to rectify the situation or clean up the electoral list which carry near a million names of persons who are either dead, out of the country, or have registered in more places than one" (Emphasis added. Note that the total number of registered voters in 1999 was about 11 million.).

Our own investigations confirm that the manipulation of the registers of voters is a malpractice that has assumed serious proportions. It was accorded prominence by the participants in our group discussions at Nuwara Eliya, Senkadagala, Colombo West, Horana-Bandaragama, Agalawatta-Bulathsinhala, Beruwala and Tissamaharama. Among the grievance articulated were that the procedures that need to be followed in getting the errors of omission in electoral registers rectified are cumbersome, and that complaints made in regard to the deliberate falsification of the registers seldom receive a response from those in higher authority. It was also alleged that one of the reasons for multiple registration is the tendency for people to get themselves entered into the registers of urban areas (in addition to registration in the areas in which they actually live) in order to qualify for admission of their children to the more prestigious urban schools. At group discussion at which the majority of participants were plantation workers it was claimed that persons closely associated with a politically powerful trade union had been entrusted the task of preparing the electoral registers.

"Fixing" the Officiating Staff

At several of our Focus Group discussions the participants alleged that there were instances of loyalists of the ruling parties being hand-picked from the ranks of government employees for appointment to posts such as Returning Officers, Presiding Officers and their deputies. This was in addition to the highly controversial appointment by the President of an Acting Elections Commissioner a few weeks prior to the presidential election. Specific mention was made in the course of the discussions to: (a) a meeting being summoned in the period leading up to the election at a venue in the agricultural research station at Gannoruwa for the purpose of assigning various election-related duties to carefully selected government officers, (b) a similar meeting of being held at Horana Pradeshiya Sabha office by another leading politician, (c) the decision-making role performed by a senior politician of the Provincial Council in the selection of staff that manned the polling stations in the Anuradhapura District, (d) politically directed promotions granted to many school principals in the Southern Province in the pre-election period, and their subsequent appointment to posts at polling stations and counting centres.

Certain discussants who had experience in serving as elections staff also alleged that the old practice of not informing those recruited to serve at the elections until the eve of the poll the exact venue to which they are to be assigned has recently been abandoned, and that this departure from convention was also part and parcel of preparing the ground for vote rigging. Although the veracity of this charge could not be ascertained without access to the official records, there is little doubt that under the conditions that prevailed during the elections of 1999 and 2000, it was not possible to guarantee the impartiality of those entrusted with key functions in the electoral process.

The conditions that prevailed at the time of these elections could, of course, be changed through the intervention of the Commissioner of Elections. There is no doubt whatever that, as a measure of safeguarding the principle of official impartiality at the forthcoming election, the Commissioner could debar those promoted during a specified period prior to the date of the poll to senior positions of government service from being assigned election-related duties. EC could also restore the former practice of allocating polling booths to the selected Returning Officers on the day before the polls, and ensuring that politicians have no say in that task.

Manipulation of the Postal Vote

Registered voters who, on account of their official duties (connected to the election itself or to other essential services), will not be able to vote on the day of the election at the polling station of the area in which they are registered, are entitled, on prior application, to be provided with facilities to cast their vote "by post" on an earlier day. The set procedure for this purpose is that the ballot paper (issued through official channels to the voter) duly marked, placed in an envelope provided for the purpose, and sealed by the voter, is handed over to the presiding officer of the postal voting centre. At each centre, the enveloped containing the votes are sorted out in accordance with the electoral division in which the voters are registered, placed in sealed packet, and then dispatched by post to the district-level counting centres that service the respective divisions.

This procedure, it has been observed, leaves room for various malpractices such as the violation of the voter’s right to secrecy of the ballot, intimidation of the voter, and misdirecting or substituting postal ballot mailbags in transit. Even at elections conducted in the1980s, there were a few reported instances on undue pressure being applied on voters by trade union leaders heaving political party links.

References were made at our group discussions to an increasing subversion of the postal vote that has resulted from the processes of politicisation of the bureaucracy. It is well known that appointments to the post of managerial posts in many state-sector institutions are being made (as in earlier times) on the basis of party loyalties. Under the existing Provincial Council-Pradeshiya Sabha arrangement, this form of politicisation has penetrated down to the regional and local levels of the state apparatus. What this has meant in many matters of routine administration is that, while even petty politicians attempt to impose their will on administrative decision-making, the officers in charge of government institutions also often misuse their authority in serving their political patron. This phenomenon, as one could expect, becomes particularly pronounced in the heat of violence-prone election campaigns. Thus, at several state sector institutions in our study areas, there was intense pressure brought to bear upon the employees to cast their vote in accordance with the wishes of their managerial coteries. Those refusing to comply were often the victims of abuse and assault, and even, loss of employment. We possess survey records of certain postal voting centres in the electoral divisions of Kalaweva, Bandaragama, Mawathagama, Mawanella, Patha Dumbara and Hanguranketa where these abuses were so intense and unconcealed that it is a matter of utmost surprise how the Elections Department could have remained unaware and/or unconcerned.

Malpractices at Polling Stations

It is perhaps no secret that there have been three principal modalities of preventing the proper conduct of voting during the day of the poll - impersonation, ballot stuffing and booth capture. Casting under pretended identity a vote which belongs to a person whose name appears in the Register of Voters but is diseased or absent on his/her own volition has, for long, being a fairly common form of impersonation in Sri Lanka. The actual punishment for a detected attempt at impersonation, however, has seldom been anything more than a rebuke. Typically, this form of impersonation has always been sporadic, and it is unlikely to have ever accounted for more than a microscopic fraction of the total of votes polled at any election. Of much greater impact in recent times is impersonation covertly or overtly accompanied by intimidation and threat intended to exclude from the poll those entitled to vote. One of the commonest forms of such exclusion is the "grabbing of polling cards". Since polling cards, distributed through the postal service among voters in advance of the election, usually serve to ascertain their identity at the polling station, organised impersonation is often preceded by the grabbing of polling cards from the possession of voters either at their homes or while the voters are on their way to the polling station. The plundered polling cards are later used for authenticating cts of impersonation at the polling station. There were also instances (only a few reported during our survey) of the removal of polling cards (through theft or other means) from the postal authorities for similar use.

Preventing voters - sometimes entire communities - from reaching the polling station through either intimidation and threat at a personal plane, or the exercise of general terror tactics (explosions, road-blocks etc.), followed by the impersonation at the polling station of those so prevented, also constitute a mode of vote rigging that has assumed increasing prominence.

The main organisational mechanism intended to prevent impersonation is that each contestant is officially permitted to appoint two "agents" to a polling station who would monitor the polling procedures on behalf of the candidate. The agents, it is expected, are individuals personally acquainted with the voters of the locality, and thus possess the capacity to detect and challenge attempts at impersonation. Our investigations show, however, that in innumerable situations (the instances recorded by us with specific details are too numerous to recount) certain politicians were able to mobilise the necessary criminal capacity (and the acquiescence of the police) to prevent the agents of rival candidates from performing their expected functions at the polling stations or, more often than not, even arriving at the polling station.

The difference between large-scale impersonation of the type referred to above and "ballot stuffing" is hardly ever distinct, although the latter term carries the connotation of brisk and disorderly loading of votes into the ballot box. For that to be possible, it would invariably be necessary to make the administrative and law enforcement mechanisms at the polling station dysfunctional, which, in turn, could be achieved either by obtaining the connivance of the officiating staff (including the police) or by overpowering it. The former could take place, as it often did at the last presidential poll, if the officiating staff has already been "fixed". The latter - i.e. overpowering - is tantamount to what is commonly known as "booth-capture". Once a polling booth is captured, the invaders could either stuff the ballot or destroy the ballot. If the aim of an act of booth-capture is that of increasing the poll of a given candidate (rather than eliminating the vote which another has already received), it could be achieved only if it is possible to ensure that the act is not formally reported by the officiating staff to higher authority. Hence, where booth-capture and ballot stuffing have taken place, it could be surmised that those who conducted the operation have acted with a measure of certainty regarding acquiescence on the part of the staff officiating at the polling station and, later, those at the counting centre. What this, in turn, implies is that widespread rigging of the poll through ballot-stuffing and booth-capture is symptomatic of an engineered systemic collapse, despite pretences to the contrary, not merely (as one would expect) on the part of the politicians responsible for the rigging, but also those of the elections bureaucracy.

The facts relating to impersonation, ballot stuffing and booth capture gathered in the course of our surveys made it abundantly clear that these malpractices took place on a large scale and on an organised footing at the presidential election of 1999. Our information also leaves absolutely no room to doubt that, while there was seldom any resistance against these acts on the part of the police and other categories of officiating staff, only inconsequential fragments of information on the disruptions that occurred were reported by them and acted upon by higher authority.

Placed against the backdrop of the pervasiveness of rigging in many electorates, the decision made, seemingly with great circumspection, by the Commissioner of Elections to either cancel the poll or reject a specified number of votes from a few polling stations could be seen as mere pretence at the exercise of his powers towards establishing the legitimacy of the election. There is, of course, the well known excuse that the Commissioner could act only on the basis of reports that are submitted to him. Such an excuse could be considered valid only if the Commissioner had exercised his powers to ensure that no political influences had been brought to bear upon the selection of the officiating staff at counting centres and polling stations. This, unfortunately, does not appear to have happened.

Matugama

On the basis of the impressions conveyed by our records on the intensity of the different forms of disruption of the poll, we have placed the electoral divisions covered by our study in the three categories, as shown below. Within each category the order of listing is also intended to indicate our comparative rating of the electoral divisions in a descending order of the intensity of rigging.

High Intensity

Hanguranketa

Patha Dumbara-Wattegama

Gampola-Nawalapitiya

Kalaweva-Kekirawa

Aranayake-Rambukkana

Beliatta-Mulkirigala

Tissamaharama

Moderate Intensity

Katana

Mawathagama

Mawanella

Attanagalla

Ja Ela-Wattala

Hakmana

Agalawatta-Bulathsinhala

Matugama

Low Intensity

Nuwara Eliya

Horana-Bandaragama

Kamburupitiya

Beruwala

Kandy-Senkadagala

Negombo

Colombo West

A Classification based on the Intensity of Disruption of Polling

(A Sample of Electoral Divisions, Presidential Election of 1999)

Use of Counterfeit Ballot Papers

At the group discussions conducted in Hambantota District, a few participants (mostly those who had served as ‘agents’ at polling stations or counting centres) claimed to have seen what they believed were counterfeit ballot papers. The specific details furnished include the finding of a bundle of unused (forged) ballot papers in a heap of garbage after the poll, the alleged use of ballot papers which were a half-inch larger than the genuine one printed on paper that did not carry the regular watermark, or ballot papers without the usual perforation.

These claims were not supported by hard evidence. However, they do not deserve to be dismissed as entirely fallacious, especially when considered retrospectively against the backdrop of several incidents reported by the media concerning ballot papers at the time of the parliamentary elections ten months later. The first of these reports referred to ballot papers being sent to Jaffna far in excess of the estimated number of eligible voters in that district. There was no satisfactory official explanation for this. The other is the much publicised farce relating to the statement made by the Commissioner of Elections (EC) on his intention of using a sticker as a foolproof method of preventing the counterfeiting of polling cards and/or ballot papers. Having carefully examined the media reports of that time (not only on the statement itself, but also on the hostile reaction of the ruling party to the claim, the charge of procedural impropriety against the EC made by the ruling party in a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, and on the subsequent failure of the EC to implement his "sticker device"), we are reluctantly compelled to ask ourselves the question whether the whole fiasco was carefully stage-managed by those of the ruling party in an attempt to establish the credibility of a politically pliant Elections Commissioner. There are several intriguing features in these reports that need to be recapitulated here. For instance, there was the question of whether it is the Human Rights Commission whose intervention is sought if the EC did, in fact, commit aprocedural impropriety. Then, there was the confusing use of the terms ‘polling card’ (chanda card) and ‘ballot paper’(chanda pathrika) in the media coverage of this issue, which the Elections Department never attempted to clarify. The significance of this lies in the fact that, since the main malpractice associated with polling cards was their being plundered from the voters, the EC would surely have been fully aware of the fact that no purpose is served by attaching a sticker to these cards. On the other hand, an identity sticker on the ballot paper (the exact form of which is kept secret until the commencement of the poll, if that type of secrecy is feasible at all) might have served as a constraint on the use of counterfeit of ballot papers, but such a device was evidently never contemplated. What did happen was that the EC gave the public some hope, totally unfounded as it eventually turned out to be, of effective measures being adopted to prevent abuses concerning polling cards and/or ballot papers. It is in such a context that one cannot dismiss the suspicions regarding malpractices - with or without official connivance - regarding this aspect of the poll.

Ballot Boxes: Tampering and Substitution

The news report about the discovery of a ballot box under strange circumstances, referred to at the beginning of this article, assumes importance in the context of the prevailing suspicions of malpractices that are deemed to occur after the closing of the poll, either in the course of transporting the ballot boxes from the polling station to the counting centre, or at the counting centre itself. The specific allegations made at our group discussions varied. Certain participants charged that the ballot boxes from certain polling stations in parts of the Southern Province were substituted with counterfeit ballot boxes containing marked ballot papers. Again, there were several claims that on some ballot boxes delivered at the counting centres at Gampaha and Matara the seals placed at the polling stations had been tampered with. We have also recorded two allegations (one concerning a polling station in the Galagedara Electoral Division, and the other on the polling station at Ragala) that the boxes containing the ballots were destroyed before they reached the counting centre. Yet another allegation was that although the polling station at the Karagoda-Uyangoda Junior School had only one ballot box, two ballot boxes said to be from that station were delivered at the counting centre in Matara. In respect of the counting centre in Kalutara, it was claimed that though all ballot boxes had been delivered at the centre by about 5.30 p.m., the counting agents were admitted to the centre well past 10.00 p.m., and that during the intervening time "suspicious activities" took place at the place where the ballot boxes were stored. We are, of course unable to authenticate any of these allegations at least some of which are likely to have been based on hearsay. We are also conscious of the fact that, in comparison to submissions made at our discussions regarding other procedural malpractices, those relating to ballot boxes were few and far between. Yet, it should be emphasised that what these submissions reflect is the persistence of a fairly widespread belief that, occasionally, powerful politicians, through prior arrangement, did muster the cooperation of state sector officers including those engaged in law enforcement to rig the results of the presidential election even after the closure of the poll. Stories such as those concerning the wayward ballot box lend credence to such belief.

Counting Malpractices

At a national election the counting of votes in each electoral district is a centralised operation, conducted simultaneously (usually at the district capitals) throughout the country. It is of interest that in Sri Lanka one of the overriding organisational considerations of the count has always been that of facilitating the release of election results to the public within the shortest possible time. At the presidential election of 1999 the count involved the enumeration of about 11 million votes cast at about 10,000 polling stations. At a Counting Centre the related tasks are handled by hundreds of middle-level government employees working under the direction of supervisory staff the apex of which is held by a ‘Senior Returning Officer’ - usually the "Government Agent" (i.e. the Secretary) of the district. The interests of the different contestants are represented at the counting centres by their respective ‘Agents’ who are expected to monitor the counting procedures.

Typically, the work at a counting centre commences late evening of the polling day and proceeds tediously until about noon the following day. Often, counting is conducted in an atmosphere of intense rivalry and tension, featured by intermittent brawls that sometimes reach pandemonium pitch, with threats and intimidation by muscle-men directed even on the officiating staff. The more powerful candidates with their armed escorts also make their presence felt especially on the impartiality with which the police could perform their functions. Given the fact that the police, in addition to preventing disorder and violence within the counting centre, are also required to perform the daunting task of protecting the centre from the boisterous crowds that gather outside, and, in addition, ensure the physical safety of defeated candidates as they depart, more often than not, the entire process of law enforcement tends to remain a mere pretext throughout the count.

The main impact of the count being conducted under these conditions is that, at many centres, the interests of the weaker contestants seldom find adequate protection, even if their agents are present at the centre. In many instances, those appointed ‘counting agents’ of the opposition parties are the very same persons who had served as ‘polling agents,’ and had faced much harassment throughout the weary day. As counting proceeds, indications regarding the likely winner at the national level filter into the counting centre. This invariably has the effect of making the counting agents of the losing parties less vigilant, and the counting staff more vulnerable to pressures exerted by those of the winning party. This, in turn, enhances the scope for deliberate errors concerning vital aspects of counting such as the separation of ‘valid votes’ from ‘spoiled votes,’ the identification of the preferences indicated on each ballot paper, and the enumeration of the votes received by each party and candidate. The related problems are exacerbated when (as it is reported to have happened at the elections conducted in 1999) members of the counting staff have been handpicked by the political parties in office, and the same parties remain on the winning streak.

The account presented above has been reconstructed with extracts from the relevant recordings at our focus group discussions supplemented with information obtained subsequently from several persons with experience in serving as senior officers at counting centres. Certain other details highlighted at our group discussions could be outlined as follows:

* The inspection of the seals placed on ballot boxes at the polling stations before they are opened by the Returning Officer at the counting centre in the presence of counting agents is often done in a perfunctory fashion. In many instances there is also no proper matching of the numbers on the ballots from each box with the returns furnished by the respective polling stations. What usually happens appears to be that the contents of several ballot boxes are simply emptied into the trough all in a heap before the sorting and counting begins.

* The rejection of votes (i.e. identification of the "spoilt votes") is not done on the basis of uniformly applied criteria. Quite often, this is due to deliberate favouritism rather than inadvertence on the part of the counting staff. There is connivance of the supervisory staff in this malpractice.

* Politically motivated counting officers indulge in the practice of deliberately "spoiling" the votes cast in favour of candidates whom they do not support through the device of surreptitiously adding an extra cross somewhere on the ballot paper.

* The process of counting involves the compiling of bundles of 50 votes, following the separation of votes cast for each contestant. There are many deliberate and inadvertent errors in making these bundles. Where the counting staff is partial towards a particular candidate, the bundles consisting of votes cast for that candidate are made to contain less than 50 ballots. Conversely, those of other candidates are made to contain more than 50. This, of course, is in addition to the sorting errors already made.

* The ‘Returning Officers’ do not act impartially when they respond to complaints from ‘counting agents.’ If the complaint happens to be from one of the weaker parties it tends to be ignored. The more powerful ‘agents’ tend to get their way in their encounters with the supervisory staff.

It should once again be emphasised that these malpractices could occur on a large scale only at places where prior arrangements have been made to rig the count. Such arrangements, as implicit in our discussions on rigging of the poll, include (a) the ‘fixing’ of the counting staff in advance of the election, (b) the substitution of or tampering with ballot boxes and discounting any evidence thereof, and (c) ensuring through the exercise of violence and the display of force that there could be no effective resistance or opposition to any malpractice, however blatant. It is of special interest that, as on the subject of ‘ballot boxes,’ the submissions made at the four discussions conducted in Kalutara District on the subject of ‘counting’ were more focused on specifics and far more emphatic than at the discussions. Described as a "den of thieves" (hora guhawak) by one of the participants, the general consensus among the discussants was that the government secretariat at Kalutara was the centre of preliminary planning for rigging of the presidential election in that district.

Election Rigging and Law Enforcement

Implicit in the foregoing discussion is the basic fact that rigging in whatever form could occur, not so much due to the absence of related statutory and administrative safeguards, but because of failures in the enforcement of such safeguards. Indeed, the large majority of election-related malpractices are criminal offences the prevention of which should remain within the purview and the capacity of the police. It could, of course, be conceded that certain failures on the part of the police are attributable to weaknesses of enforcement mechanisms such as those that stem from scarcity of manpower or inadequacy of infrastructure and facilities. But far more often, the cause for the failures is corruption of the part of the law enforcement authorities. The police personnel, especially those serving rural areas, often find it advantageous to collaborate with the criminal, if the criminal is politically powerful. The benefits derived through political patronage apart, the police personnel, like their counterparts in other state sector services, succumb to political pressures. Thus, in the final analysis, the principal cause for the apparent impotence of the police in the face of escalating and unconcealed election rigging is that it is part and parcel of the spreading endemicity of lawlessness and corruption in governance which only the political parties holding the reins of office at a given point of time could curb, if not eradicate. There could be no denial that large-scale election rigging in most of its exemplifications occurs entirely because it is perpetuated and fostered by those who rule the country.