SRI LANKA: The boycott by Tamil Tigers of last year's Sri Lankan presidential poll, which swayed the result, was a travesty, said former Munster MEP John Cushnahan, chief EU election monitor, yesterday. He urged that measures be taken to stop the rebels compromising future polls.
Mr Cushnahan, who headed the mission that oversaw November's poll, said Sri Lanka - which is due to hold local government elections later this month - will not be able to do so comprehensively until the Tigers are reined in.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam intimidated hundreds of thousands of the country's minority Tamils with their boycott, preventing them from voting in the rebel strongholds of the north and east.
That scuppered the chances of the more moderate candidate and helped usher Mahinda Rajapakse, viewed as a hardliner from the Sinhalese majority, to the presidency, said analysts.
"What happened in the north was a travesty of democracy. In reality, no election took place," Mr Cushnahan said after he presented his final report on the election. "It was deplorable and needs to be condemned and needs to be acted upon.
"It will be impossible to have an entire election process held throughout the entirety of Sri Lanka which is in accordance with internationally recognised democratic standards unless the problems that existed in the north and east . . . are resolved."
Mr Cushnahan said future elections should be supervised by an international body as happened in Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor and Liberia.
But he stopped short of calling November's election unfair, saying he believed the Tigers imposed the boycott simply to ensure no candidate could claim a mandate from the Tamil people.
"What we have an obligation to do is to address the attempt to distort the whole process." He said radical measures were needed to ensure the Tigers, who fought the state in a two-decade war that killed more than 64,000 people before a 2002 truce, cannot block or bully voters in future.
"This election was certainly far from perfect.It was a story of two parts. In the south there was a dramatic improvement on the previous elections, but in the north and east it was not."