Spelling out polls procedures

Political party officials, candidates and voters with questions on election procedure in Sri Lanka, and anyone interested in understanding the country’s election process, will find the answers they seek and plenty of useful basic information in the One-Stop Election Guide – Sri Lanka.

Published by People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), the comprehensive guide is designed to explain the basic features of the country’s election process, and covers everything from presidential, parliamentary, provincial council and local authority elections to voter registration and postal votes.

In his foreword to the guide, Commissioner of Elections Dayananda Dissanayake writes that there has been “a long-felt need to make available a concise and easily understandable publication explaining the various (election) laws and procedures.”

An ancillary publication, A Glossary of Governance and Political Terms, prepared by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, lists and defines in alphabetical order familiar and not-so-familiar terms used in the election process. The glossary, which is in Sinhala, Tamil and English, covers the full range of election terminology, from Absolute Majority and Gender Equality to Transparency and Zero Sum.