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When the North came to nought
By Nalaka Nonis
The veiled threat by the LTTE to voters to boycott the Thursday polls in the North-East, saw polling stations virtually empty except for the staff who waited in vain for the arrival of voters.

The cluster polling booths that were setup especially for voters from uncleared areas saw people trickling in once-in –a-while to cast their ballot.
The officials who had little or no election business to attend to were seen reading papers that had been spread out on the desks in front of them.
Policemen deployed to provide security were sitting around chatting. Foreign and local polls observers also appeared to have little to do.

“We have very little work. So far no one has voted, although 1000 voters are registered in this booth. We are just hanging around waiting for the people to come and vote. In the evening we will have to seal and hand over the empty boxes to the Kachcheri,” said A. Mariampillai, a senior presiding officer of the booth at Omanthai Maha Vidyalaya.

The few voters who came to vote were seen hurrying in to cast their ballot and hurrying out.

In Omanthai where 61 cluster polling booths had been set up for voters from uncleared areas in the Vanni district, some booths didn’t have a single voter while others saw less than 10 voters each.

We spoke to Thanalachchami Amarawathi (56) who was one of the few people who defied the LTTE’s call to boycott voting .“I have never missed voting at elections so far. We must all vote,” Amarawathi said.
Despite the poor voter turnout there was tight security at the polling booths, especially at the cluster booths. About 500 policemen had been deployed to provide security at these booths.

“We don’t have much to do given the poor turnout today. We are still hopeful that people will turn up,” said a very relaxed policeman on duty.
In the Jaffna district out of 701,938 registered voters only 8524 cast their votes .Only one person from the Kilinochchi electorate had defied LTTE threats and cast his vote. The recorded votes in the 11 electorates did not exceed 500.

In the Vanni district, only 85, 874 out of 250,386 registered voters cast their votes. The Muslim dominated Digamadulla district in the eastern province had a healthy voter turnout of 288,208 out of the registered 396,453 voters- a percentate of 72.70.

Despite threats by the LTTE the people in Batticaloa showed a keen interest in voting. 154,615 out of 318,728 voters in the district voted -a percentage of 48.51.

This was despite at least four grenade attacks on the EPDP office in Batticaloa, on the eve of polls. Despite the attacks many EPDP members voted. Most of them were provided police or army escorts. At least three buses carrying EPDP cadres were attacked on the election day.

In a bid to prevent voters crossing from uncleared to cleared areas the LTTE had reportedly suspended ferry services.There were also reports that several LTTE front organisations had issued statements, on the eve of elections warning people to remain indoors as certain parties were planning to create disturbances on election day.

Expectations and reality
When The Sunday Times met Jaffna’s GA, K. Ganesh, about three weeks ago he was confident that the polls would be conducted freely. He said preparations had been made to transport civilians from the uncleared areas to the cleared areas.He also said security arrangements had been made for the cluster booths to be set up in Muhamalai where an estimated 100,000 voters were expected on election day.

He said about 10,000 staff would be deployed at 624 polling booths. But a week ahead of Thursday’s election the GA on the advice of the Defence Ministry reduced the number of polling booths to 220 and on election day there were less than 5000 staff on duty.

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