Vote to Regret – be it North or South. Blame attaches to the Vote, tailed by regret,directed at the candidate that succeeds in picking your vote. Time for jubilation was short as the expectations were too high: fallout was rapid.
Did you fault yourself in voting for a regime change or otherwise, overthrowing a regime that was corrupt to the rim and brought another to office, corrupt to the edge? Watched, in vain, your valued vote that courageously dispatched home, over-baked parliamentarians: returned to a higher office of ministerial rank in a government of Mr. Good Governance via the national list. He trusted defeated candidates for disloyalty to Rajapaksa matters little – since you have learnt to suffer any indignity gracefully.
Realised your folly belatedly, too late to revise or rectify. Fire burns in the loins with seething anger as prices rise in the market square that makes them non-affordable.
Would you vote again to punish the regime that cheated you to restore good governance: by bringing a discredited bunch back to office? Are you a subscriber to lax governance?You rightfully wanted to teach a lesson that you never learnt? That is the nature of democracy, silly!
Don’t plead for lack of options — (what could we do? Who else is to vote?) You are the master of your own household, use your grey cells, if any.
Elections are orchestrated and the results manipulated by the party in office. It is important to set a trend by winning early rounds at local authority elections. It creates a drift, as it did at the miniscule cooperative election results, inching towards the Joint Opposition.
Now the voters in the North, again, have no option – but to show a preference for Sampanthan or Wigneswaran. Problem is self-created. An unholy coalition is in power without a credible opposition, with a weird leader C.V. Wigneswaran, on show, with no clout, which he searches desperately for, by shifting positions testing the most – vantages. South misreads the message. Are you for peace through reconciliation or for the resuming of hostilities at an opportune moment?
Tamils in the North have no spokesmen to speak their minds and the communication gap continues. MR used the security situation to select two provinces most favourable to him for early local government elections amidst protest from the UNP. It set a winning pattern that encouraged his forces to dominate the field and discouraged the opposing from surfacing prematurely to display preferences – message received by the voters in the neighbouring provinces; soon it became infectious as provinces at regular intervals fell to MR.
Our generation did their duty by the country by eliminating terrorism. Now the ball is with the next generation to hunt for sunshine. Do they have the spunk, guts and grit? Are they belching human rights industry and burping discarded western values of mixed- up kids?
Chief Minister Wigneswaran walks to a controversy with his talk, in search of headlines that would propel him to be the next leader of the TNA. Tamils have an opportunity of jettisoning CV and joining the mainstream on the results of the coming elections.Their fate is in their hands as South keeps watch.
Notwithstanding previous protests, for its survival, UNP has no option but to pick two provinces for the local elections – may hold elections in the Central [Districts of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and Matale] and Eastern [Districts of Batticoloa, Trincomalee and Amparai] Provinces exclusively in the first round but UNP should not postpone the Southern provincial elections too close to a national election, as it had stayed strongly with MR at the worst of times. However, Presidential and General elections were held and results released island-wide within 48 hours. Another hoax is in offer?
Rajapaksa held the Uva PC and lost to the UNP with Badulla District bringing the votes just prior to the Presidential elections displaying a trend that enabled UNP to get off to a jump-start. A wiser man would have held Uva elections earlier and held the Southern PC elections just prior to the Presidential elections to display that he carried the winning streak. A similar error was made by President D.B. Wijetunga to hold the Southern and Western PC elections prior to the national elections that brought Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunga (CBK) to the forefront; she leapt over a bemused Anura Bandaranaike to become the Opposition’s Presidential candidate.
Gotabhaya [Gota] Rajapaksa is the formidable candidate for the Opposition at the moment; he is the unseen ‘new boy’ that has displayed positive results in every task he undertook. He is attractive to the young and the urbane unlike the populist aged MR.
The political grapevine is suggesting that President Sirisena has serious issues with the UNP and would prefer to install Gotabhaya as his Prime Minister ahead of Ranil Wickremesinghe. This could be loose conjecture but Gota should consider running as the prime candidate for the Matale district [electorates of Dambulla, Laggala, Rattota and Matale] on the Opposition slate at the coming elections to stay focussed. There would be an electrifying surge for the‘new force’ that leads to a merger of forces within the SLFP with a new leader in the making.War heroes would be his prime assets speaking to the nation on his platform.
He should not make a pitch for Chief Minister: wait till it falls into his lap. Local councillors of varied political complexions are swifter pole-vaulters than parliamentarians.
However, this move may not be attractive to the JO hierarchy, who may be grooming other candidates for high office. Flashing is the red alarm for Gota, as he has to attract voter confidence with an early showing, as did CBK: enabled her to overtake her brother/mother in a leadership quest and to plot a fresh route and gave the SLFP, a novel direction with a new team. Gota would lose his momentum to his brother, if he stands and stares; MR would gladly fill the vacuum. Gota is too loyal to his elder brother and may loose the opportunity.
An impetus is the need of the moment. Many SLFP stalwarts would realize the folly of running a consecutively twice — defeated MR — a prime cause for the SLFP to remain divided and for its defeat due to the tolerated antics of the family.
MR needs the artful mind of his smart brother Basil to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Yet, he has more to gain if another brother leads the SLFP to victory more surely than him.
Rajapaksas are a close clan and highly bonded. MR may be the first to give way to a brother in the making.
Gota has two hazards to overcome — the minority vote and a lesser evil, the attachment to Duminda de Silva, (lovable as Saradiel to the masses in distributing freebies from sources questionable), with his largeness. A weird relationship for a disciplined military man!
Was he not the (invisible) appointed advisor, to the Defence Ministry while Sajin Vaz Gunewardane held a similar (visible) position in the Foreign Ministry? Who cares in this corrupt sleazy criminalized society?
Most elders in the SLFP would sprint to the winning side to become the early birds. Others would join in this steeplechase overcoming any hurdle to be on the winning side as its pioneers.
Poor MR has placed his last trump in his depleted hand of aces to the minorities- (a) to do away with the concurrent list and (b) of a bonanza to the Muslims. On this issue he has lost much of the Sinhala Buddhist votes, his last bastion. He, for sure, will not gain the Northern votes, either, remembering his 13 plus loose talk. The available avenue for the SLFP is to change its stance and state the three lists (Reserved, Concurrent and Provincial) would be re-arranged, but who would believe them? It would be more of a disarrangement.
MR cannot lift a campaign without the mastermind of Basil but his running out of the country on the night of the lost election was fatal. None is smarter than Basil in the SLFP but carries more minuses than pluses.
Gota is not a political animal; carries an incurable deficiency of not playing to the gallery, fortunately gets his priorities correct. Surely, like his more illustrious brother, ‘Gota’ will not sell the country that he recovered from the terrorists.
Courtesy: Daily Mirror
