Category: News

The voter turnout percentages for the 2024 Presidential Election have been released as polling closed at 4:00 p.m. today.

Several districts recorded significant voter participation.

Notable turnouts include Nuwara-Eliya and Gampaha with 80% each, followed by Polonnaruwa, Kandy, and Hambantota at 78%. Monaragala, Kalutara, Ratnapura, and several others reported turnout around 75%. Meanwhile, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu recorded the lowest turnout at 68%.

Breakdown of the voter turnout by district:

– Gampaha – 80%
– Colombo – 75%
– Batticaloa – 69%
– Jaffna – 65%
– Kurunegala – 75%
– Mullaitivu – 68%
– Kandy – 78%
– Kalutara – 75%
– Galle – 74%
– Vavuniya – 72%
– Mannar – 72%
– Trincomalee – 76%
– Matale – 74%
– Nuwara-Eliya – 80%
– Monaragala – 77%
– Polonnaruwa – 78%
– Ratnapura – 75%
– Ampara – 70%
– Kilinochchi – 72%
– Puttalam – 75%
– Badulla – 73%
– Hambantota – 78%
– Kegalle – 75%
– Anuradhapura – 75%

An island-wide curfew has been imposed with effect from 10 pm to 6 am tomorrow (22) under the powers vested with President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Despite the current peaceful situation in the country, police said the curfew has been imposed to further ensure public safety.

Citizens are requested to remain at home during the curfew hours.

During this period, ID cards and authorized documents issued to officials engaged in election duties will be accepted as curfew passes.

Also, travellers heading to or from the airport can use their flight tickets and related documents as curfew passes. Employees of organizations providing essential services may present their official ID cards or relevant documentation as passes.

Police have instructed all officers to strictly enforce the curfew.

Sri Lanka is preparing for its presidential election on September 21, 2024. The Election Commission has released a comprehensive set of guidelines to ensure voters can manoeuvre the process smoothly. With several candidates in the running, understanding the voting procedure is a necessity to exercising the voter’s democratic rights.

Essential Identification Documents

Before heading to the polling station, ensure you have the appropriate identification. Every voter is required to present one of the following official identity documents:

• National Identity Card (NIC)
• Valid passport
• Valid driving license
• Senior citizens’ identity card
• Government pensioners’ identity card
• Identity card issued to clergy
• Temporary identity card issued by the Election Commission, obtainable through your local Grama Niladhari

Carrying these documents helps verify your eligibility to vote and prevents any delays in the process. The official poll card is not mandatory, yet the Election Commission advises bringing it along for convenience. It helps polling staff locate your details quickly.

Step-by-Step Voting Process

Once at the polling station, you will proceed through a series of checks before casting your ballot. Here’s a breakdown of what happens at each stage:

1. Identity verification

The first officer you encounter will request your identification. They will carefully examine the document—whether it’s your NIC, passport, or other approved ID—and verify that your face matches the photo. If the officer is satisfied with your identity, you’ll be directed to the next officer.

2. Poll card and name verification

At the second stage, another officer will ask for your official poll card, if you have it. They will then locate your name in the electoral register and ask you to verbally confirm it. Once confirmed, the officer will announce your name and your serial number aloud. If there are no objections, you will be directed to the next officer.

3. Application of indelible ink

The third officer will check your left hand’s little finger to ensure it hasn’t already been marked with indelible ink, which prevents multiple voting. The ink is then applied to your finger—a process that is mandatory. If you refuse this step, you will not be allowed to vote. After this, the officer hands you the ballot paper, and you are ready to cast your vote.

Marking your ballot: preferences and choices

Upon receiving your ballot paper, you will head to a private voting cubicle. Here, you can select your preferred candidates. Since more than three candidates are contesting this election, the ballot allows voters to indicate preferences for up to three candidates.

• First Preference: Mark the number 1 next to the name of your top-choice candidate.
• Second Preference: Mark the number 2 next to your second-choice candidate.
• Third Preference: Mark the number 3 next to your third-choice candidate.

Though it is optional to mark all three preferences, the ballot will still be valid as long as the number 1 is marked correctly for one candidate. The Election Commission has clarified that if only the first preference is indicated, the vote will be counted, even if the second and third preferences are left blank.

Folding and submitting your ballot

After making your selections, fold the ballot paper—either in two or four folds—and place it into the ballot box. This concludes the voting process. Be careful not to make any marks on the ballot that could identify you, as this will lead to its rejection.

What invalidates a ballot?

To avoid your vote being disqualified, ensure you follow the guidelines for marking the ballot correctly. The Election Commission has issued warnings regarding several common mistakes that could lead to rejection:

• Leaving all candidate boxes unmarked
• Voting for more than one candidate by marking 1 for multiple names
• Marking 1 for one candidate and using an “X” or any other symbol for another
• Marking only the second or third preference without indicating a first preference
• Using marks other than 1, 2, and 3 for preferences
• Marking more than three preferences

Additionally, if there are any signs or writing on the ballot that could be traced back to the voter, the ballot will be discarded. Careful attention is necessary to ensure that your vote counts.

Special Voting Arrangements for Voters with Disabilities

For voters with disabilities or special needs, the Election Commission has outlined additional measures to ensure accessibility. Those who are visually impaired or physically unable to mark the ballot by hand are permitted to bring an assisting person to help them vote. This assistant must be approved by a letter from the Grama Niladhari, certified by a Government Medical Officer.

Upon arrival at the polling station, the identity of both the voter and their assistant will be verified. The assistant will then accompany the voter into the cubicle and mark the ballot on their behalf, in the presence of the Senior Presiding Officer and another polling staff member. If a visually impaired voter arrives without an assistant, the Senior Presiding Officer will guide them through the process, marking the vote according to the voter’s instructions in the presence of another official.

Election offences and penalties

Election Day brings strict legal frameworks aimed at protecting the integrity of the voting process. Both the Ceylon Penal Code and Parliamentary Acts cover a wide range of electoral offences, with serious consequences for those found guilty. These offences can be broadly categorized into three groups:

1. Election Offences

These include impersonating another voter, damaging or defacing ballots, or displaying a marked ballot. Such actions carry penalties of up to two years in prison and a loss of civil rights for seven years.

2. Corrupt Practices

Bribery, undue influence, and offering incentives to voters are classified as corrupt practices. Individuals found guilty may face a fine of Rs. 300 and the potential loss of their voting rights for three years.

3. Illegal Practices

Certain election-related activities, such as excessive campaign spending, distributing false information, or violating printing regulations, fall under illegal practices. Offenders may be fined Rs. 300 and face a loss of civil rights for three years.

Polling officers play a crucial role in ensuring the voting process runs smoothly and legally. They are tasked with checking identification, managing the voting process, and ensuring that the elections are conducted fairly. Transparency is a key element of this process, with multiple officers overseeing different stages, from identity verification to the final submission of ballots.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that the progress on key commitments under the IMF-supported program will be formally evaluated during the third review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

An IMF spokesperson stated, “Progress in meeting key commitments under the IMF-supported program will be formally assessed in the context of the third review of the EFF. The timing of the third review will be discussed with the government after the recently announced presidential elections.”

The IMF and the government will coordinate on the scheduling of the review post-elections.

Sri Lankans go to the polls this weekend for the country’s first election since defaulting on piles of sovereign debt in 2022, when the nation plunged into its worst economic crisis across 70 years of independence.

Off the coast of Colombo, the capital city, round-the-clock construction offers a possible glimpse of the future.

Backed by several hundred million dollars of American funding, a unit of India’s Adani Group conglomerate and two local partners are undertaking a massive expansion of the city’s main port, the busiest in South Asia. The goal is to make Colombo an even bigger shipping destination, while slowly prying away the island nation from China, which has pumped billions of dollars into infrastructure projects across Asia and Africa.

The Colombo West International Terminal is one of Washington’s biggest investments in the region. Backed by a $553 million loan from the US Development Finance Corp., an agency created by the Trump administration in 2019 as an answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the project underscores Washington’s ambitions in a key — if volatile — part of Asia.

“This project in particular serves deeper economic ties for Sri Lanka, India and the United States,” said Chulanee Attanayake, a researcher and expert in Sri Lanka’s foreign relations.

“This is not just an economic venture but it’s also a geopolitical statement,” she added.

Over the past few years, Sri Lanka became emblematic for the wrong reasons: a cautionary tale of a rising economy that mismanaged its finances and went bankrupt as a result. In the chaos that followed, inflation soared, family savings were decimated and street protests toppled the president at the time. The International Monetary Fund stepped in with billions of bailout dollars.

Ensuring the stability of Sri Lanka, an ethnically diverse nation south of the subcontinent, is now of increasing importance to China, India and the US, which are all jockeying for influence with lawmakers and investors.

Over the last decade, a mix of Chinese and Indian developers have transformed downtown Colombo. New hotels, glass skyscrapers and a Chinese-funded “Lotus Tower” adorn the waterfront. A sprawling land reclamation effort adjacent to the port has set aside plots for office towers, luxury villas and a marina — with tax benefits to attract foreign investors.

Much of the development ground to a halt during the 2022 economic crisis, which was brought on by factors including longstanding government deficits, high foreign debt and the devastating effects of the pandemic on tourism. Many critics also blame the overextension of Chinese loans used to fund unworkable infrastructure projects.

Yet Sri Lanka, which for much of its recent history weathered a brutal civil war, has since turned a corner. And candidates in this week’s national election have been busy making their pitches for a rosier future.

The three-way race pits President Ranil Wickremesinghe — the incumbent whose administration negotiated the $3 billion IMF bailout — against two main challengers: the parliamentary opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and the populist Marxist Anura Kumara Dissanayake, also known as AKD.

To secure the 48-month IMF bailout, Wickremesinghe’s administration raised taxes, hiked utility bills, reformed governance and undertook negotiations with creditors. Many of the measures are unpopular in the nation of 22 million, where per capita income is near a decade-low of less than $4,000.

Wickremesinghe’s opponents want to reopen negotiations with the IMF.

“We are a bankrupt country,” Premadasa told Bloomberg News. “We have to make sure that our policies promote national interests.”

While none of the top candidates have proposed pivoting away from China, they’ve all supported a more balanced approach to international relations. Dissayanake’s leftist backers have called for more scrutiny of investment deals with foreign countries.

Pollsters say the race may head to a run-off for the first time in the country’s history. That could delay the result beyond a Sept. 21 vote. On Thursday, the government said it reached an agreement in principle over the restructuring of about $12.6 billion in bonds, following earlier deals with official creditors.

Despite the uncertainty, signs of a broader turnaround are increasingly easy to spot. The Sri Lankan rupee rose more than 10% last year, and the economy has returned to steady growth boosted by improvements in the tourism and agricultural sectors.

A boom in maritime shipping has also turned the Indian Ocean into a hive of activity.

The Colombo West International Terminal will be the fourth major center for receiving container ships in the Port of Colombo — and the only one backed by funding from the US government. Like other local terminals, it will be a center for transshipping, in which mega-vessels dock to swap cargo with smaller ships serving the region. That activity has helped make Sri Lanka an outsized player in global trade.

As regional trade has ballooned, several existing terminals are either at or over capacity, according to Drewry Maritime Research, a shipping research and consulting firm. When the US-backed terminal is complete, it’s set to add as many as 3.2 million container units per year in capacity, up almost 40% from current levels, according to Drewry.

For now, the terminal is little more than a hook-shaped plot of sandy earth. On a recent gusty afternoon, the arrival of a fleet of remote-operated cranes and steady construction on a nearly mile-long jetty offered signs of progress. Project managers say the port is scheduled to begin its first phase of operations at the end of the year.

“Traditionally, the Japanese and the Chinese and the Indians have been here, but we would also like to invite big investment from the Western countries,” Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Sabry said in an interview. The project “shows the growing strategic importance of Sri Lanka,” he added.

China has long dominated global infrastructure financing through its Belt and Road Initiative, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Beijing has spent $11.2 billion worth of grants and loans on ports, highways and other infrastructure in Sri Lanka between 2006 and 2022, according to AidData, a research lab at William & Mary in Virginia. The US, by comparison, spent $97 million in that period.

Beijing’s massive infrastructure loans have led to accusations that it’s an irresponsible lender and drives countries to default. AidData said in a November report, however, that China has been recalibrating its lending drive to be more sustainable. Globally, China spends $80 billion in development finance to low- and middle-income countries, AidData said, compared with $60 billion by the US.

Still, the US has pitched itself as a more transparent alternative. The DFC has said its loan to fund the Colombo port won’t contribute to the country’s sovereign debt but declined to provide specifics on financing terms with the developer — a joint venture majority-owned by Adani, with smaller stakes held by Sri Lanka’s John Keells Holdings PLC and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority.

Perhaps the most telling example illustrating how China’s infrastructure effort can go awry is located a few hours south of Colombo, in Hambantota. There, the Sri Lankan government used Chinese loans as part of a major development push conceived by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

But the project failed to attract the expected container-ship traffic, said Eleanor Hadland, senior analyst at Drewry. In exchange for $1.1 billion, the Sri Lankan government handed China Merchant Port Holdings Co. a 99-year lease on the port in 2017. With vast storage space on hand, it’s recently become a hub for automobile transshipments.

Last year, AidData said Beijing has spent more money on the port than any other in the world — and that it was a top contender for a Chinese military base. Sabry, the foreign minister, said Sri Lanka would not tolerate a foreign military presence on its soil.

Meanwhile, Colombo remains the site-of-choice for the thousands of ships that dock in Sri Lanka each year. Hadland described the US-backed project as “significantly less risky for the funding agency” given Colombo Port’s established place as a vessel hub.

In an interview, Nisha Biswal, deputy chief executive of DFC, said Sri Lanka is at “the crossroads of all seafaring commerce that transverses the Indo-Pacific,” and expanding the port serves the interests of maritime traffic and the island.

“This is a country that has been struggling economically, struggling with a lot of bad debt, and that has not yielded the economic returns for the country as it should have,” she said.

–With assistance from P R Sanjai, Anusha Ondaatjie, Shruti Srivastava, Shadab Nazmi and Yasufumi Saito.