The process leading up to the presidential election has commenced. With the death of one contestant on Thursday and the withdrawal of another thirty-eight out of forty candidates who placed their deposits will be contesting the elections.The ballot paper is expected to be 27 inches long if the paper is printed single column and between 11 - 12 inches if the paper is printed double column! 

Thirty-five candidates contested the last presidential election of November 2019. Only the winner of that poll -Gotabaya Rajapaksa- of the SLPP and Sajith Premadasa of the NDF were able to secure the stipulated minimum 5 percent of the total votes cast. The other thirty-three candidates lost their deposits. 
Gotabaya Rajapaksa who won the election polled 52.25 percent of votes cast while Sajith Premadasa of the NDF who came second polled 41.99 percent. JVP Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake who received the third highest number of votes also forfeited his deposit. He received only 3.16 percent of the total votes. 
At the presidential election in September 2024, we can expect to see at least thirty-four of the candidates lose their deposits. According to the grapevine, many of these thirty-four candidates are backed by the main candidates to split the votes of their opponents.  
Yet, history of past polls has shown that votes these dummy candidates take away are minimal. They will not have any impact on the outcome of the poll.  
The veracity of the idiom was seen at a public meeting held by a particular presidential candidate at Medirigiriya a few days ago. The poor man despite transporting his car -which was damaged by an LTTE bomb- was scarcely able to gather a crowd. Those present could be counted on fingers on one’s hands.  
Your guess is as good as ours as to why so many of these political nobodies are contesting the poll, especially in a country as small as our little isle. At the presidential election in France (a country with a population of 67.97 million) in April 2022, only six candidates stood for election. 
Only one candidate lost his deposit. 
The large number of candidates on our ballot paper is undoubtedly going to create confusion in the minds of older members of our community seeking the names of candidates of their choice.  
While this is bad enough, now to compound matters further, poll monitors are beginning to get involved in the electoral process. 
PAFFREL the election monitoring body, called the main political contenders to a public election debate. One or the other of the minnows in the race, protested, claiming publicity garnered by the main candidates put other candidates at a disadvantage.  
The election monitoring body immediately changed its plans and announced it would accommodate all candidates to a public debate!  
O tempora, o mores, perhaps we should reframe the term and refer to it as a seminar. Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) in our country are famous for holding seminars on a variety of subjects at the drop of a hat. This will be right up their street.  

But holding such a debate/seminar will be a costly affair and since NGOs receive funds from agencies outside this country, will we not ill-advisedly be permitting foreign involvement in the presidential election?  
In the past PAFFREL has brought in international observers to monitor our elections. This year will be no exception. 
During the last US presidential election Donald Trump -the losing candidate- cast aspersions on the US election process. He claimed he was robbed of his electoral victory. Trump’s loss resulted in violent attempts by groups of supporters attempting to halt the final result of that election being announced.  
Several people died and a larger number were wounded as a result.  
This year too, Trump is making similar charges of possible election fraud. Perhaps it is time PAFFREL sends a batch of international election observers to oversee the US election. In this way, our election monitoring body could help ease tensions in the US. They, as an ‘independent body’ would give an ‘unbiased verdict’ on the US presidential election and possibly help the world understand whether the US election was free and fair.