MY TIME IS UP – MAHINDA DESHAPRIYA

With just hours to go before the 2020 Parliamentary Election, Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya spoke to the Daily Mirror online on the preparations for the polls, concerns and his future plans Excerpts of the interview:

- Easwaran Rutnam

Q Take us through the preparations made for the Parliamentary Election...

We have assigned the health sector staff for each polling booth. There will be at least one officer for each polling booth. We will be allocating health staff to the counting centres to monitor the counting agents and ensure they don’t have any symptoms of the coronavirus.

We are happy with the arrangements. Credit must go to the District teams, Government Agents and our Additional Commissioner and others. We only gave the instructions while the implementation was by the officers on the ground. Its not just the Election Commission staff but the entire public sector is involved.

Q There had been concerns that voters in quarantine may not be able to vote...

Yes, we had proposed advanced voting and mobile booths for the people in quarantine but that had to be scrapped. There were legal barriers. The Commission felt this would be the first step to move forward but we received some objections from the public. They questioned why give only people in quarantine special treatment and not others. So we sought legal advise and decided to scrap the move.

Finally, we decided that the voters in home quarantine will visit the polling booths on the day of the election and vote between 4pm and 5pm. They can come only with their family members and not mix with others. They will be given a special cubicle. Voters who have completed 14 days mandatory quarantine must be cleared by the Ministry of Health or Public Health Inspectors to be able to vote.

Q The cost of this election has increased as a result of coronavirus. How much of an increase have we seen so far?