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Startling revelations: Concern over foreign observers’ role at polls
View(s):- Posers to EC: Are foreign monitors needed when their agenda is not only to observe elections
By Our Diplomatic Editor
More than one hundred persons comprised two teams of election observers, one from the European Union and one from the Commonwealth Secretariat, at last weekend’s presidential election.
In their responses to questions from the Sunday Times, some startling revelations were made over their presence in the country.
The EU mission head from Spain was answering a question by this newspaper if their report would go beyond election observation to the country’s political climate and human rights. His answer in the affirmative was echoed by the Commonwealth team’s head, a former President of the Seychelles. (Please see detailed answers below.)
Among the most revealing was the admission that the EU Observer Mission was here to ensure that Sri Lanka complied with international treaties, particularly the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and even the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One would have thought they came to observe an election, but it seems from their own admission that the purpose of their visit was more—or their job description as Election Observers—a misnomer.
The EU observers took credit for even shifting the political debate in Sri Lanka, saying that the presidential election was peaceful because it focused on the International Monetary Fund, the economy, and welfare—reflecting poorly on what is playing out in Europe these days with Far Right movements, Islamophobia, and anti-immigration.
This should encourage the EU to influence a similar shift in the political debate at home in Europe, where the world is witnessing a ‘normalisation of racism.’ Following the EU Parliament (EP) elections earlier this year, there has been a clear shift to the Far Right in the composition of the EU Parliament, with the 10th European Parliament having more Far Right MEPs than ever before. Far-right, racist rhetoric is influencing social processes and election outcomes across Europe.
The Elections Commission of Sri Lanka needs to be clear-eyed regarding its well-intended ‘invitation’ to foreign observers, given that by admission of the monitoring teams themselves, their mandate derives from the ‘political processes of the EU’ and that they aim to “assess your country’s compliance with its own commitments under international treaties.”
One of the stated objectives of the Far Right Patriots for Europe in the European Parliament is to ‘change EU policymaking’. It can therefore be anticipated that the final report of the EU observers in particular and their wide-ranging recommendations will feed back into the same political processes as conditionalities on Sri Lanka on multiple fronts, including GSP and in human rights fora.
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