“Prabhakaran, a textbook fascist…” - The Economist (‘Victory for the Tiger Slayer’ Jan 28^th, 2010)

“Resistance to imperialism does not of course involve only armed force or bands of guerrillas. It is mainly allied with nationalism and with an aroused sense of aggrieved religious, cultural or existential identity.”- Edward Said (‘The Voyage In: Third World Intellectuals and Metropolitan Cultures’)

It is easy to be wise after the event, so I usually try to be wise before it. In a piece originally entitled ‘Crisis 2010: The post election scenario’ published over a month ago, from Dec 20th 2009 through to the 23rd, in the Sunday Lakbima, Transcurrents, Sri Lanka Guardian and Ada Derana, this is how I saw the Presidential election panning out:

“It is a fairly safe assumption that with the Southern province elections the Rajapakse administration hit its electoral ceiling and the UNP its floor. The ceiling is fairly high, around 65%, and the floor (almost a basement floor, courtesy Mr. Wickremesinghe) pretty low, 25%. It is a safe guess that President Rajapakse had his eyes on Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s “ground record”.

However, he will have to contend with the fact that even without the Fonseka challenge the UPFA with its patriotic platform has peaked and is on a slow parabolic downswing, enabling him at best to beat or reach President Jayawardene’s winning 1982 figure, Premadasa’s 1988 score or CBK’s 1999 result, but not her higher, or one might say, substantially fuller, figure of 1994. That last figure was an anomaly in any case, not generated by her “charisma” or “peace program” …but by default – the Tiger having serially assassinated every viable UNP presidential candidate…

On balance it is exceedingly doubtful that any personality around today can, even as “common candidate”, bridge and exceed the gap of around 30% between the Opposition and President Rajapakse. If the UNP had a viable candidate such as Karu Jayasuriya, then a Fonseka or Sarath Silva “spoiler” third candidacy might have made it a close fight, but even so, President Rajapakse would probably win, in a replay of JRJ’s 1982 or Premadasa’s 1988 victories.” (Sunday Lakbimanews Dec 20, 2009)

The only thing amiss about this projection is that it underestimated the sweeping character of the President’s victory in the Sinhala, and more especially, Sinhala Buddhist heartland, but it was made before the TNA allied with the opposition.

Mahinda Rajapakse gave the lie to the notion that the minorities, especially the Tamil minority held the key to the outcome of the election.  Given the demographics on the ground, namely that the Sinhalese constitute an overwhelming majority, Rajapakse proved that winning an overwhelming majority of that overwhelming majority was a viable path to victory, leaving the Tamil voters relatively peripheral to the outcome just as the Tamil majority areas are peripheral to the island.  The (geographic) periphery proved to be (politically) peripheral, while the road to power lay through the paddy fields and the provinces of the Sinhala heartland. The Sinhala peasantry which provided the manpower to sustain the war against the Tigers and finally prevail over them, provided the votes needed for a political victory for the incumbent over the Fonseka option chosen ironically by the unreconstructed Tamil nationalists. The foot soldiers who loyally followed Gen Fonseka as Army chief, voted with their families for Mahinda. It is not that they deserted Fonseka but that Fonseka was perceived as deserting the camp of Sinhala nationalism. Rajapakse romanced and won the hearts of the heartland.

The question remains as to how the Opposition’s strategists, Western diplomatic opinion and the overwhelming majority of media pundits got it so very wrong. Not only were they on the wrong side of History and totally oblivious to the sentiments of the vast majority of their fellow citizens, their demonstrated powers of analysis require them to get to the back of the (Poli Sci) class and work it out. A cursory acquaintance with modern history would have told them that no military chief has bested a strong national political leadership in a political struggle in the aftermath of a historic, victorious struggle, be it war or revolution. As I said on Al Jazeera, can anyone recall the name of the Russian general or field marshal who led the successful campaign against the Chechen insurgency? The Russian voter remembers only President Putin, and we in Sri Lanka are experiencing our Putin moment. A Fonseka candidacy could have had a chance only in the context of a military defeat, an economic depression or an incumbent with a wimp factor. Furthermore, an Obama campaign can work only with an Obama candidacy, not grafted onto a John McCain or Ariel Sharon one. A Terminator-type candidate had no chance against a serial smiler with proven machismo and warm if rascally, piratical charm.

The statistical starting point of the opposition strategists and most commentators, not to mention those who sent an array of ‘polls’ by email, was the Presidential election of 2005. We were informed that “the facts were undeniable” when the only thing that was undeniable was the hollowness of pure empiricism as an analytical methodology. It was truly imbecilic to take 2005 as the base line, when that was an entirely different conjuncture. (i) The then President Chandrika Kumaratunga had thrown her not inconsiderable weight behind former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at that election and (ii) the intervening period was taken up with a full-on, victorious war, making the difference between 2005 and 2010 one between distinct historical periods, “pre-war”  and “postwar”, or  “the Prabhakaran period” and the “post-Prabhakaran period” with their qualitatively different dynamics and altered states of collective consciousness; of national moods.

Election 2010 was held in a period that was post-Prabhakaran but not post-nationalist or post-patriotic. The reckoning that Fonseka’s military record could neutralize that sufficiently, even to the extent of bearing the burden of an alliance with the TNA, the Tiger fellow travelers, ( and Ranil, the Tiger appeaser) proved disastrous. Above all, the Opposition, its western backers/handlers, its Diaspora Tamil allies and local pundits grossly underestimated the patriotism/nationalism and anti-interventionism/anti-imperialism of the Sinhala masses, as well as their democratic aversion to the risk of Bonapartist tyranny.  In Gramscian terms, the vital “national popular” and “national democratic” dimensions were ignored by the opposition’s strategists and ideologues, except in the most superficial sense of fielding a war hero as candidate. The struggle was perceived as being, and to a great extent was in fact, one between a “national popular bloc” identified with MR and a “neo-comprador bloc” identified with the joint Opposition.  Those factors, the depth and extent of which were underestimated, were activated not only by the perceived threat to the main political leader who had restored national pride, but by the presence of the pro-Tiger TNA and Ranil Wickremesinghe’s unrepentantly pro-appeasement (CFA) UNP at General Fonseka’s side, the reactivation of the “war crimes” propaganda in the West and certain gratuitous remarks by some Western representatives. The model for Rajapakse’s defeat was supposed to be that of Churchill in 1945, but not only was the born again politician Fonseka no Clement Attlee, Labour leader Attlee did not contest in alliance with Nazi supporter Oswald Mosely and appeaser Neville Chamberlain! Though unaware of its Biblical provenance, “tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are” seems to have been the criteria of the Sinhala Buddhist voter.

Is the newly and handsomely re-elected incumbent then secure from challenges? The first challenge is the avoidance of hubristic adventurism. President Jayewardene won a 5/6ths majority at the parliamentary election of 1977 and promptly disenfranchised his main opponent Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike. He won the Presidential election of 1982 comfortably, but blundered by postponing a parliamentary election and substituting a referendum instead. These two moves, coming in the wake of clear victories, de-legitimized the administration, generating a huge crisis with a bloody denouement. One can only hope that President Rajapakse is not nudged along the same path.

Less apocalyptically, dangers still beckon. If I may quote once more from my article a shade over a month ago:

‘The real problem starts after the elections. Presidents Jayewardene and Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga had dreadfully crisis-tossed second terms, which were terrible experiences for the country and its citizenry. If re-elected, President Rajapakse is likely to have a similar experience, though it may be lesser in intensity because he has, to his undying credit, removed the main motor of development of those earlier crises: Prabhakaran, the Tigers and the war. However, will he be able to overcome the abiding temptation of Sri Lankan presidents (what might be termed the CBK syndrome) to attempt escape from the confines of a rigid constitution?

The most prudent course of action for a President in his or her second term would be to take a leaf from the book of any US President, however popular or powerful, and understand that the corollary of occupying a seat of such great power and influence is that it is limited by two terms. No better recommendation could be given to a Sri Lankan president than to accept these limits of power and (a) to seek to ameliorate the North-South or Sinhala-Tamil question by simply implementing the 13th amendment to the existing Constitution while (b) unblocking the road to meritocracy which is a prerequisite for economic development, by implementing the 17th amendment, rather than to risk a referendum on more venturesome architectural moves.

What is sad is that no Sri Lankan president will accept that Realist advice with equanimity: hence the fiasco of Chandrika’s abortive “Constitutional revolution”. …Though the argument for a total replacement of the Constitution rather than its full implementation or reform, is that the existing one is too authoritarian and/or unsuited to the resolution of the ethnic issue, the real reason-cum-target is the two term limit and the electoral system of proportional representation which act as checks and balances.

The incumbent will be forced to confront the unresolved ethnic issue (despite a reluctance to admit its existence) in the form of the TNA, which has not yet eschewed Tamil Eelam and the Vadukkodai Resolution let alone accepted the sole practicable formula of maximum devolution within a unitary state (the UK model). It may very well pick up Trincomalee at the parliamentary election, approximating the TULF’s sweep in 1977. Its “asking price” will therefore be high; far too high for any government to grant without fear of a Southern backlash.’ (Ibid)

What now, what next?  The Sinhalese have voted overwhelmingly one way, the Tamils the other. What this means is that despite developmental successes, the Administration’s stewardship of the North and East and relationship with the ethnic minorities in general has been as stark a political failure as its relationship with the Sinhalese has been a political success. One is the reflection upside down, of the other.  Today, the majority of the Tamil–speaking people of the North and east have voted in a single bloc, and barring the Sinhala majority areas, the North and East have psychologically and politically re-merged! The failure to win notably large political support from the Tamils and Muslims in the East, despite the progress of economic development, not only reveals the flaws of that model of development – perceived as ethnocentric – but of the administration’s central and abiding weakness so far: its blind-spot regarding the political and psychological dimensions of the ethno-national question and its insensitivity to the dimension of ethnicity and the management of difference.

The ethnic polarization of the map of Sri Lanka reveals a basic structural weakness of the Lankan state formation. Samir Amin tells us that systems decay precisely at their periphery, and this I believe is true of state formations too. While President Rajapakse has resolved the decades long crisis of state power in that he has restored the state’s territorial borders (which are once again co-extensive with its natural ones) and monopoly of violence, he has not yet resolved the state’s crisis of legitimacy at its periphery. There is no political consensus which cross-cuts ethnicity and runs from North to South, East to West.  Thus, the crisis continues.

Sad, troubling, but more affordable in the final analysis for the Sinhalese than the Tamils because the former have the numbers, the big guns, the engines of economic growth, the ideological fuel of assertive nationalism and the historical memory-driven collective political will to maintain or restore coercive control over the North East. This means that the Tamils, having now seen that Sinhala sentiment tends overwhelmingly one way and the incumbent is here to stay another term, have one more chance to negotiate its way into the mainstream or remain an alienated periphery in more senses than one. That last chance or those last chances are at the parliamentary and provincial council election, as well as within a constituent assembly if one is constituted.  The Tamils need to become stakeholders of the Rajapakse administration and partners – neither posturing competitors nor pliant clients—of Sinhala nationalism. This entails a double and mutual shift: on the part of triumphant Sinhala nationalism and the re-elected presidency, to greater openness, generosity and accommodation of the Tamil sentiments, and on the part of the Tamils, to leaders from their community with whom the Sinhala nationalist dominated centre is willing and likely to deal with.  Here, I can only think of Devananda and perhaps Dharmalingam Siddharthan. Prudence, responsibility and constructive partnership are the need of the hour.  If the Tamils vote a Hamas equivalent, the North East could go the Gaza way. Far better they vote an Abbas/Palestinian Authority equivalent.  Any society that could produce Prabhakaran, a “textbook fascist”, “the Pol Pot of South Asia” (John F Burns, New York Times) is a sick society, or was. When the Sinhalese produced an equivalent, Wijeweera (who, however, was never deified as was the ‘Sun God’), it had enough healthy antibodies to destroy him. Tamil society did not. If Tamil society decides to be led and represented by those who do not yet forswear the evil that was Prabharakan and the Tigers, we can only conclude that the sickness has not left its body politic and is possibly endemic. This may render problematic, both the prospect of integration and the perspective of autonomy. The larger polity could find it problematic to fully integrate with or grant autonomy/devolve power to a sub-national formation from which the bacillus of separatism remains politically and ideologically dominant.   

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On the day after elections, I sat in the afternoon to write this amidst phone calls and text messages inquiring and informing about “strong” rumours on “result rigging” by the Rajapaksa regime. All rumours, spinning wildly in the world of the all knowing urban middle class, who had “access to inside information”, but knew nothing about of how an election is conducted and the results are released.

Their “inside” information, was not the information that was available in the districts outside Colombo, where President Rajapaksa was heavily voted for. In those districts, the Opposition political activists, the UNF, the JVP, the SLMC and the DPF counting agents in counting centres who sat through the night along with thousands of public servants who manually counted ballot papers and knew how the voting had been in their own areas, resigned to their abodes in accepting the declared results.

If there had been any manipulation(s) thereafter in Colombo, those who toiled in the districts and knew their district results, would have turned their district towns into wild and angry Teherans, even without the Colombo based UNF – JVP leaders. They would not have taken such altering of their victories lying down. There were no such uproar in those districts after election results were declared over the air waves, despite their leaders rejecting the results.

The issue is here in Colombo, where the stalwarts, the king makers, the political aspirants and financiers who wanted a stake in State power and hence a president in their bid to form a government, who felt dislocated from their keenly woven dream of sucking into power. Obviously, they were badly shaken and shocked. Obviously too, they needed some excuse to cover their almost “certain victory” that turned into a frightening defeat within just 24 hours.

That defeat of the Common Candidate, Gen (rtd) Sarath Fonseka, who could only poll 4.17 million and 40.15% votes as a Sinhala war hero, needs very little analysing. He could not muster even the total and the percentage vote that Ranil W (4.7 million and 48.4%) could muster in 2005 November. General (rtd) Fonseka had 1.4 million votes in excess (700,000 new votes plus the 700,000 Tamil votes that went under the LTTE boycott) to poll from, than when Ranil contested the 2005 presidential elections.

Added was the JVP / Mangala factor that opposed Ranil then, but aligned strongly with Gen (rtd) Fonseka this time. Instead of Ranil who was accused as anti – Sinhala for his slogan on power sharing in a united country, here was a Sinhala war hero, who could not poll as much as Ranil the liberal did.

Thus the final results of this 2010 presidential elections and its outcome can be summarised and listed as follows, without long analyses and autopsies.

1. The UNF-JVP led alliance with SLMC, DPF and Mangala S in it and supported by a TNA faction and some CWC deserters, with all its political contradictions and the JVP calling its Common Candidate an A-political Candidate, was not seen and accepted as having a clear political identity and a political leadership.
2. The Common Candidate’s image was consciously promoted and established as a strong and brave military leader to claim credit for the war victory and that created doubts about democratic promises by others on his campaign platform.
3. There was no difference between Rajapaksa’s claim for Sinhala leadership and Gen (rtd) Fonseka’s claim for a Sinhala leadership and the rural people believed in the Sinhala “political” leadership they were familiar with?
4. The claim that the JVP is a powerful campaigner and could influence the rural voter, was exploded as a myth with President Rajapaksa steam rolling the Common Candidate in all Sinhala rural areas. The JVP was proved an impotent Narodnik group that can only mobilise their cadres on agitational assignments and as having no cordial influence on and trust with, rural life.
5. The advantage of having minority leaders in this ad hoc front was not used to its advantage, with JVP given unnecessary and undue importance. If the actual consensus reached with TNA’s Sampanthan was publicly campaigned for, that held plenty of democratic promises (disarming all para military groups, for instance) not only for the Tamil polity, but for the Sinhala and Muslim people as well, that could have been politically argued for and would have activated more Sinhala and Tamil votes. Keeping that consensus underground and denying such consensus, allowed the Rajapaksa campaign to project Gen (rtd) Fonseka as one whose cheating the Sinhala people.

All of them remind me of a very creative parable put to me by an elderly Tamil gentleman residing in Colombo, a week before the presidential poll. He asked me, if I was accused of a murder for passing that place and the judge sentenced me to death, whom would I throw my wrath on ? On the judge, or on the hangman, he asked. For the Tamil people, the wrath was on the judge, for the hangman had to do his job. But for the Sinhala people, they wanted the judge who had the power to decide on their fate.

What nevertheless is the end result ? Sri Lanka is left without a politically viable Opposition, to live with a refurbished regime that can now act as it wishes. The mandate the Rajapaksa regime received, using or rather abusing all the State power, now gives them a license to drive at full speed and go beyond where they stopped for the presidential election.

Thus all rhetoric about challenging the election results, instead of calling for stringent methods to curb any abuse of State media and State resources, are negative approaches to their own failure in projecting a political alternative to the Rajapaksa candidacy.

This very narrow approach by the main opposition in challenging this regained strength of the Rajapaksas, is once again shooting astray. It proves the inability of the main opposition to act politically in gearing for the future. It proves the opposition leadership can not assess and decide on its own politically and that it is depending on the JVP which has no influence even on the rural polity.

One need to understand that if the JVP has any political clout, it should have definitely totalled much more than the 243,342 votes it polled from all the PC elections. One need to accept that the JVP could not impact on the rural vote, even at this presidential election and thus has to be left alone to fend for itself.

The main opposition UNP and the other minority parties and their leaders need to understand that what went wrong was their politics in choosing and rallying round a wrong candidate and dropping important issues like the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution and reforms in education, health and transport in a market economy. All that have to be put to right well in advance of the parliamentary elections before April this year. That is, if the opposition UNF wants to be a strong parliamentary opposition and also for the people to be democratically safe.

If the main opposition fails in this responsibility, it would fail the people in Sri Lanka, who by their own choice mandated a family regime to live with a far more autocratic and dangerous rule, hereafter. That in the presence of racist politics and in the absence of alternate democratic politics.

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Aachcharya writing from Jaffna

I wrote on the 30^th of December in a post to Groundviews (and republished in the Daily Mirror) that the assertion that the Tamil people would be deciders in the Presidential election would be a myth. There was nothing brilliant or extraordinary about what I said at that time, but it was contrary to public perception that was prevalent all over the country and in international media circles. What I suggested was that for the Tamil people to be deciders two conditions have to be fulfilled. I wrote:

“For the Tamils to be the deciders in the election (like they could have been in the last) they have to vote as a whole, to one candidate and the Sinhala votes to both candidates should be almost equal.”

A lot of people thought it would be close in the South. I feared a good lead for Mahinda Rajapaksha in the rural south. I told my friends that a 600,000-800,000 lead in the South by Mahinda cannot be offset by SF by the margins that he receives in Minority areas. I never expected a 1.8 million lead for him in the South. Some of it might have been rigged. We just don’t know and we will never know. But one thing is clear the rural south did come out strongly for him.

My vote

I voted in the Nallur electorate in the Jaffna electoral district and I did vote for General Sarath Fonseka. My early impression was that both candidates did not deserve my vote but I soon altered my stance. For me taking a decision to spoil the vote meant not believing in the system. The system is indeed fundamentally flawed but then if we can’t change things democratically, the only alternative is for change to be attempted violently. Most in this country are tired of losing lives and I am definitely one of them. So the option of not believing in the system was not open to me. It was just inconsequential. I also thought that it is not right to approach this elections standing from an ivory tower of personal conscience and die hard political philosophy and principle. Politics, including the act of voting, is about taking tough decisions. I did not have the energy for another MR presidency. I was convinced that a vote for anyone else but SF would in effect indirectly contribute to a MR Presidency. The unknown devil at least I thought would provide an opportunity to try something differently. If the SF presidency even by a fraction or a chance might have increased the collective opportunity of life over death of the Tamil community I thought it was my duty to vote for him. And hence I voted for Sarath Fonseka, despite his flaws, despite the vaguness vis a vis his position on the problems of the minorities, despite his anti-minority pronouncements in the past, despite his role in the war. I voted for him because it was the only strong way of showing my protest to the incumbent and because I believed in the political forces supporting him. It was an uncomfortable decision to take but I had no other option.

The voter turnout in Jaffna

Many have expressed concern about the ‘poor turnout’ in Jaffna. Some die hard SF supporters were annoyed with the turnout. Some Pro-LTTE and Anti- LTTE Tamil Diaspora sites who opposed TNA’s decision to support SF have called the low voter turnout a boycott. Some know-it-all types in the Diaspora have said that the Jaffna people are not interested in a democracy. Nothing can be more insulting.

The following are some reasons for the ‘low voter turnout’, in my opinion:

1. 40% of registered voters are not in Jaffna. The 600,000 registered voters includes those migrated. Many Tamils in Colombo who moved from Jaffna have their vote in Jaffna – they are not registered in Colombo.
2. Killinochchi low voting (Killinochchi is part of the Jaffna electoral district. Only 7% voting was recorded mainly because of the poor state of facilities provided for the IDPs to vote),
3. Bomb scare in TNA strongholds on the day of the elections (example Nallur, Manipay),
4. Internal displacement within Jaffna (From the Islands to the mainland. From Chavahacheri (Thenmarachchi) to Jaffna and other places). People possibly were not willing to travel 10-12 kilometers to vote.
5. 80,000 people displaced by the High Security Zones (23,000 live in welfare centers and the rest with family and friends or have migrated).

The Chavahacheri, Udupiddy, Manipay, Vadukoddai, Thenmarachchi electorates in Jaffna recorded 30% voter turn out. This must be 60% of the actual residents. The Jaffna and Nallur electorates polled around 20%. The Jaffna peninsula average voter turnout should be in the high twenties and this must be at least 50% of the actual residents. If there had been no High Security Zones, internal displacement within Jaffna and proper voter registration this might have gone upto at least 60%. The 2010 turn out is the highest voter turn out ever in Jaffna in a Presidential election. The figures from the last election are:

2005 – 7.868 (1%) (Note: LTTE enforced a boycott)

1994 – 17,716 (2.97%) (Note: Jaffna was under LTTE control at this time)

1999 – 117,549 (19.18%) (Note: Killinochchi polled less than 4% – Was under LTTE control).

In 2010, 185,132 votes were polled with an average of 25%.

A comparison with the general election also shows us that this turn out is quite decent: In the 2004 General Elections Jaffna polled 300,000 votes (47%) the highest recorded in more than 20 years in election history. (I attended the only TNA rally in Jaffna on the 23^rd of January in Sangilyan Thoppu, Nallur where R. Sampanthan of the TNA said that last time the margin for MR was less than 200,000 and the vote that TNA had received in the 2004 General Elections was 620,000. I thought at that time that comparing the turn out at General Elections was not good analysis). In the 2001 election around 200,000 votes were polled (30%). In 2000 around 130,000 votes were polled averaging at just over 20%. It must be remembered that in both 2001 and 2004 General Elections the TNA had the backing of the LTTE.

The voter turnout in the rest of the North and East

Batticaloa has polled a remarkably consistent 64% as in the last three presidential elections. Vavuniya polled 43% this time and voted in the 40s in 2005 and 1999. Trincomalee polled 65% and had polled in the 60s in the past three elections as well. Voter turn out in Mannar was 35%. It has been consistently in the 30s. In 2005 the turn out was 30%. None of these districts were affected by LTTE’s enforced boycott in 2005. Mullaitivu has recorded less than 4% in the past having been under LTTE control and this time recorded a 14%.

What is the message from the voter turn out in the North?

The message is that there are very serious issues to be addressed prime among them being the resettlement of IDPs. This includes both the Vanni IDPs and the Old IDPs. Demilitarisation is also key to a higher voter turn out.

What is the message from the people of the North and East at this election?

The ‘liberated’ have clearly registered their protest against their ‘liberator’. The vote in Killinochchi and Mullaitivu amongst all difficulties and however small were clearly against the President. All over the North and East this has vibrated. The Jaffna vote clearly rejects Mahinda Rajapaksha’s Chechnyan style local leader Douglas Devananda. I don’t know how Dayan Jayatilleke is going to still call him the Jaffna people’s choice. EPDP won only Kayts in the 10 electorates in the Jaffna peninsula that even by a 600 vote margin. Even in Jaffna and Nallur which make up by and large the Jaffna Municpal Council (which he supposedly won) he lost receiving only 27% and 21% of the votes. It is loud and clear from Jaffna that he is not wanted; his style of politics is not desired. (But he might do well in the general elections under an MR presidency. Patronage politics will help him for another six years). The East has similarly spoken very clearly rejecting MR’s Chechnyan style local leader V. Muralidharan alias Karuna Amman. Pillayan should be silently happy with the vote. Two years of centrally controlled pseudo-provincial council rule has been rejected by the people. (Here again the TNA might struggle at the General elections under a MR Presidency).

The vote shows a clearly divided country: 65% of the minorities (Tamils, Muslims, Up Country Tamils) preferring one candidate and more than 60% of the majority community preferring another. I do not know what else we need to show that we are far from being a united country. But the President does not seem like he wants to reflect on this message. To journalists who met him soon after the elections he has repeated the same story: “the IDPs are happy in the camps”. We are likely to see more of the same.

The way forward

I am afraid that the result might be taken negatively by the minorities and the opposition parties, that even if they come together that they cannot make an impact. But the minority parties should take the positive message – the possibility that this election gave/has given of collectively envisaging an agenda. The opposition parties have to resolve and work together to break the common sense philosophy in Sri Lanka that being in the opposition is useless. If our democratic culture is to be rejuvenated we need opposition parties to believe that an opposition can do credible work. Concrete action based on a concrete agenda that mobilizes the people has to be worked out. The minority parties have to show their communities that it is possible to serve them sitting in the opposition. A strong coalition between the TNA-SLMC-DPF is immediately possible. That should be a starter for a broader coalition of progressive forces. This Government is sure to continue to wage a war on the opposition with new force. It has to be resisted and fought back democratically. For that we need opposition leaders who believe in themselves.

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I hear the crack of a whip, you tell me it’s the sound of peace.

I don’t believe you.

Speak for yourself. Not for me.

I heard them coming. They have no choice.

I saw them cry. They have no choice.

Shame on you. They have no choice.

A picture speaks a thousand words, silence another-

Silence. We have given up. Silenced. We have accepted defeat.

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1. Sarath Fonseka lost. We no longer need to stress ourselves to a level requiring medication worrying about what he might do if he wins. We can stop pretending to like him.
2. Mahinda Rajapaksa can never ever run for President again (unless of course he changes the constitution).
3. Stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, almost 75% of people still went out and voted. That’s always a good thing.
4. Almost 2% of the people voted for someone other than Mahinda and Sarath. That’s just awesome. We haven’t seen that in some time.
5. Compared to landslide victories in recent provincial council polls, 57.88% is a significant drop in popularity for the Rajapakse Government. (E.g. from 72.39% to 58.59% in Uva) This trend could hurt Mahinda’s chances of getting a 2/3 majority in the Parliament.
6. The Tamil people have made it very clear that they don’t believe that Rajapakse is doing anything for them. Now we can see if how he responds to that. After a really really long time, they had their say.
7. The UNP won’t have to worry about winning anything for some time, so they have six years to get their act together and become the Opposition that we want. We hope they’ll deliver.
8. The JVP has been proven to be irrelevant. This election has compromised the hold that the IUSF has in the Universities and only good can come out of that.
9. Douglas, Karuna and Pillayan, with all their guns and their goons couldn’t deliver the East and the North to Mahinda. No one’s really afraid of them anymore.
10. It’s all downhill for Rajapaksa from here. One month from now we won’t be able to find one single person who voted for him.

Published on Groundviews with the kind permission of author who first sent the original version of this article via email. This was also written before the announcement made today that Parliament will be dissolved soon.

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