Youth network AFRIEL is preparing to deploy a team of 3, 000 independent citizen reporters to ensure the upcoming Presidential election is conducted in a free and fair manner.

The 3, 000 youth citizen reporters will be introduced to the Elections Commission at the mega October 5 youth event organized by AFRIEL and the ‘March 12’ group during which key candidates for the upcoming election are also due to speak.

The 3, 000 citizen reporters have been trained by AFRIEL, together with the help of the People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) and the Centre for Monitoring Election Violations (CMEV).

The citizen reporters were selected from 1, 000 villages in the 22 districts, at the rate of three citizen reporters a village, AFRIEL Executive Director Ravindra De Silva said.

This is the first time a concept of this nature has been practically enforced in Sri Lanka. The citizen reporters will ensure no violation of election law occurs at the polling districts they are assigned too.

De Silva explained that all mechanisms were in place for the citizen reporters to immediately inform the police, the elections commission and independent election observers if there was any infraction of election law.

He said this was aimed at putting an end to the high levels of corruption, misuse of state property and other violations of election law that occurred in the villages during past elections.