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| - Shouldn’t the candidates express their preference when voting for the compass?
The parliamentary election is less than a month away. A text stating that there is no ‘battle of preference’ in the compass (National People’s Power) at a time of intensifying competition between parties and various candidates caught the attention of many pro/opposition people.
Social Media Posts:
A social media post stated, " There is no battle of preference in the compass. Vote for the party. They will send the most suitable person to the Parliament.”
We received several requests asking about the accuracy of this, and based on them, we inquired about it.
Fact Check
We checked whether the National People’s Power has made a statement or reference stating that voters should only vote for the party apart from the preference system and that they will decide who is elected. But we have not seen any mention of such a decision being taken.
However, in the past, the members of the National People’s Party often referred to a ‘battle of preference’ in the mainstream media and on other occasions, so we inquired about this from the party's leading members and from the media division.
Bimal Rathnayake
Bimal Rathnayake, a member of the National People’s Power and a National List candidate, stated that the National People’s Power also acts according to the election law followed by other parties and that the voter should mark his vote on the compass and then mark preferential votes according to his wishes. However, he pointed out that there is no fight between each one to get preferences. He explained more about this as follows.
“Our policy is that there is no preference fight between us. We are doing the entire campaign within a collective campaign plan. That means there are no offices of only one person. There are no posters of only one person. But people can vote for candidates. People are elected to the parliament according to the order of preference. This is the election law. The party will not choose someone who got less votes instead of someone who got more votes.”
National People’s Power
The media division of the National People’s Power stated that they are doing the election campaign in the same way as the ‘Janata Vimukthi Peramune’ and therefore, the party does not have ‘battle of preferences’. They state that it does not mean only to vote for the party and that they will select the deserving person to the parliament.
What they have meant from the statement ‘there is not battle of preference’ is that they will not have election offices for each candidate but they will be dividing the areas and set up offices per two or three candidates and carry out the election campaign.
Accordingly, the media division states that the voter should vote for the party and then mark their preference to two or three candidates who are contesting for the party from the specific division.
They further explained in this regard that, this does not mean that it is not possible to vote for other candidates in another part of the district. They voters can vote for any NPP candidate in the district. They stated that they are following this system in order to carry out an election campaign free of preference fight.
Preferential voting system
The 14th Amendment of the Constitution has introduced a system of preferential voting based on the number candidates to be nominated by each political party or independent group.
Every voter has the right to mark his/her preference from the list of candidates in the party or group for which he/she is voting. According to the numbers given to each candidate after receiving the nomination papers by the Returning Officer, the said preference can be marked up to three times.
The second stage of counting of votes is the counting of preferential votes which will determine the specific candidates elected by a political party or an independent group.
In addition, if the respective party gets national list seats according to the number of votes, then the respective party or the independent group can select candidates for the position of parliament from their national list. NPP national list here.
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Conclusion
Our investigation shows that the post on social media stating that the candidates of the National People’s Power should not be given preference in the upcoming parliamentary election and that voting for the party alone is sufficient are misleading. The National People’s Power mentions that, like other parties, here too, preferences should be expressed to the candidates, and this means that there is no fight to get preferences among the party’s candidate.
According to the electoral law, candidates who receives the most votes is elected for the number of seats that will be awarded to the party according to the votes obtained from the respective district.
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