Violence goes with Sri Lankan election

Press, 20 December 1988, Page 8

Violence goes with Sri Lankan election

NZPA-Reuter Colombo Turnout was low when Sri Lankans began voting for a new President yesterday after a week-end of election-related violence that killed more than 30 people.

Gun attacks and a bomb explosion marred the eve and dawn of polling day. Police said the incidents appeared part of a campaign by Left-wing rebels to keep the country’s nine million voters away from the polls. “It is very slow because the people are afraid to vote,” said the presiding officer at a polling booth in the southern district of Matara.

Forty thousand policemen, backed by troops and paramilitary forces, are mounting the biggest security operation for any election on the island. Election officials said polling was slow when the 8000 election booths across the Indian Ocean island opened but it was expected to pick up later. “There were only very few people,. maybe six or seven, at the booth where I voted ... On previous occasions there used to be long queues,” a voter in Colombo said. Gunmen killed an election official and wounded three other people in an attack on vehicles carrying poll workers at Wellawaya in the central hills on Sunday night, the police said.

A soldier was killed when an Army mobile patrol came under gunfire at Kalutara, a Colombo suburb, also on Sunday night. Gunmen killed six members of the family of an official of the opposition Freedom Party of a Presidential candidate, Sirima Bandaranaike, in the central Matale district, the police said. A bomb, explosion at a polling booth in Colombo two hours before polls opened wounded a policeman.

At Yakkala in Mrs Bandaranaike’s constituency, 30km from Colombo, 40 men assaulted election officers on Sunday night and wounded a policeman and six workers, the police said. They said the injured staff were replaced and voting started there on schedule.