National Election Commission Chairman Mahinda Deshapriya yesterday requested all political parties and candidates contesting the General Election to postpone all their election campaigns and extend their support to fight against ‘COVID-19’.
In a Facebook post, he said that the preferential vote numbers of the candidates would not be issued until a new date is fixed for the election.
The Election Commission on Saturday issued a Gazette Extraordinary notifying the postponement of the election to a date beyond May 14.
“The Parliamentary Election has been postponed beyond May 14, and we can only think about fixing a new date after April 20. That is after the Sinhala and Tamil New Year season, and about one month since the postponement of the election. Therefore I request all political parties, candidates, their supporters and political activists to suspend all political campaigns and help combat our enemy COVID-19. I also request them not to do any indirect propaganda campaigns during this period by way of distributing freebies. They are also requested to halt propaganda through the media,” Deshapriya said in his Facebook post.
Meanwhile, according to the Election Commission a total of 7,452 candidates are contesting the upcoming election, 3,652 of them from political parties and the rest from independent groups.
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