For the presidential election, a Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) has travelled to Colombo. This is the 200th election that the Commonwealth has observed since it first started doing so in the 1980s.
Following a request from Sri Lanka’s Election Commission, the Commonwealth Secretary-General has sent a 15-person Observer Group to monitor the whole election process as the country prepares to go to the polls on September 21.
Former Seychelles President and Group Chairperson Danny Faure expressed his honour at being in Sri Lanka to commemorate the Commonwealth’s 200th anniversary of election monitoring in a news conference in Colombo.
“With the SL election, the Commonwealth marks 200 election observations.”
He declared: “We are here to support the strengthening of democratic institutions and processes, as well as to allow citizen involvement and representation during elections, as part of the Commonwealth’s whole electoral cycle strategy in its engagement with member nations.
“Sri Lankans will vote on Saturday, the 21st, which is International Day of Peace. On this day that the entire world celebrates, mankind pledges to put peace first and seek to create a society that values peace. This is consistent with the ideals of the Commonwealth, as expressed in the Commonwealth Charter, which calls for the advancement of peace and prosperity as well as free and democratic communities in order to improve the lives of all people.
Members of the support team saw the advance voting in Colombo on September 11 and 12. This is also known as postal voting, and its goal is to allow eligible voters who are unable to vote in person on September 21 to cast their ballots.
In the meanwhile, the observation group has started engaging with a variety of stakeholders. In the lead-up to the election, they will meet with the Sri Lanka Election Commission, citizen observers and election monitors, members of political parties, the police, and civil society organisations.
The task assigned to the observation group is to monitor and assess every facet of the pre-election landscape, polling day operations, and the aftermath.Starting on September 19, the organisation will send out small teams of observers to several regions to watch the election preparations and have meetings with local stakeholders where they are.
They will watch the opening, voting, closing, counting, and results management procedures on election day. On September 23, 2024, they will release an interim statement outlining their early findings.
After that, the Group will turn in a final report with recommendations on a number of electoral procedure-related issues.
Observer group members of the Commonwealth: The Commonwealth Observer Group’s members are listed alphabetically by nation name, with Ian Hughes, the Supervisor of Elections for the Antigua and Barbuda Electoral Commission, serving as the group’s chair. Former President of the Seychelles, Danny Faure, Former Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs of the Bahamas, Allyson Maynard Gibson Chief Elections Officer of Belize, Josephine Tamai Program Manager Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls of the Pacific Women Mediators Network in Fiji Ambassador Manoah Esipisu, the former Kenyan High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Ambassador Jayna Pankaj Kothari, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India, Tres-Ann Kremer, Regional Director-Caribbean, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, Jamaica,Dr. Aderemi Ajibewa, former political director of ECOWAS, Nigeria; Sara Naseem, former communications and advocacy manager, Transparency Maldives, Maldives; Maryan Street MNZM, former cabinet minister, New Zealand Professor Mandla Mchunu, the former chief electoral officer of the Electoral Commission of South Africa; Dr. Victor Shale, an expert in governance and elections in South Africa; and Muhammad Amir Wasim, the chief bureau chief of Daily Dawn in Pakistan. Cynthia Barrow-Giles is a professor of Constitutional Governance and Politics at The University of the West Indies in Saint Lucia.
