DailyNews
The Centre for Monitoring Free and Fair Elections and Democratic Rights (MENIKE) has called for the amendment of the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law to make it mandatory for candidates to declare their assets along with the handing over of nominations.
Issuing its final report on monitoring of the Parliamentary election of April 8, 2010, it states that such amendments should vest authority with the returning office to reject nominations which are not supported by such declaration.
MENIKE (abbreviation for Methiwarana Nirikshana Kendraya) also urged political parties and civil societies to share responsibility of educating voters.They should act in a manner to restore confidence in the democratic system among voters and the public rather than make them lose confidence.
They should work towards making accept the election results.
It also observed that there are unnecessarily large number of parties, groups and candidates contesting elections making the election process a complex and an expensive one. Distribution and display of hand bills, posters, banners and cutouts have become a problem leading to violation of election laws. Intraparty conflict is also on the rise, it noted.
According to MENIKE, the preferential voting system had to be remedied and considers the mixture of the old electorate based voting system and a district representative system on the cumulative votes of the electorates in the Polling Division, which is the district as the ideal remedy.
It also noted that the percentage of the number of rejected votes is increasing, while the voter turn out in many areas was also low.
Voters seem to have lost faith in the electoral system in particular and democracy in general, MENIKE noted.