The People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFEREL) will take legal action against candidates who breached the Election law at the recently concluded Local Authorities Elections.
PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi told the Daily News that 15 such candidates have been identified so far in the first round of information gathering.
“The candidates who bribed the voters are among them. All of them are from the main parties. However, we need to collect concrete evidence before filing cases and at times the people hesitate to come out and give evidence,” he said.
Commenting on the list of 80 corrupt candidates in the fray at the previous elections as identified by the PAFFEREL, he said the majority had been defeated, but about 10 such candidates had won while two of them had been nominated as Heads of LG bodies.
“All of them represent the main parties and we decided to write to the General Secretaries of those parties urging not to appoint them as Heads of those respective LG bodies,” he said.
He also regretted that the bill on 'Campaign Finance Upper Limitation for Elections', which the PAFFEREL took the initiation to draft, was handed over to the Government in August last year but did not proceed thereafter.
He said the Election watchdog groups have decided to collectively pressure the Government to adopt the legislation before the forthcoming Provincial Council Elections.