a new head of state - whether you like it, or not.
mahinda rajapakse has been elected the 5th president of the democratic socialist republic of sri lanka by a majority of the sri lankan people. this isn’t shocking, but speaking for myself, i think i, till the very last second, had a dash of hope that people might wake up to the reality of the situation and do the right thing. it looks like they didnt. ranil had the minority’s solid support, too bad that the turn out in the north and east areas, which is largely and obviously pro-ranil, was pathetic. interestingly, where ranil won, he won by a huge margin, and where he lost, he lost by not-so-much. i have a feeling that if everyone who had voted for all the other candidates, victor hettigoda and whohave you, had voted for ranil, he may have won.
those of you who voted for mahinda, go out and party, those of you who didn’t, sit at home and wallow in contemplation of the serious shit that you will soon be dealing with. anyway, for better or for worse, its done now, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. you can’t change it, you can’t fix it. let’s just hope things go a little better than us anti-mahinda (note : this doesn’t necessarily mean that the same people are also hardcore pro-ranil) people speculated. who knows? lets keep our minds broad and our hearts open. and sit tight and pray (because that’s what this has resorted to) for the best.
for more consistant updates and detailed coverage, nittewa will come in handy. be warned however, this is everything that accurate reporting should be but far from un-biased. scourge is in mourning or on strike, i can’t quite fathom it yet. either way, its with understandable reason.
I’m so glad Mahinda won. I hope Ranil learnt not to sleep with the LTTE and court the minorities to the detriment of the majority.
Comment by Harsha — November 18, 2005 @ 9:30 am
to the detriment of the majority? WTF? what detriment? how does peace and working toward it constitute as detrimetal to anyone…? I can’t understand why 50% of our nation has to suffer the consequence of the other halves narrow minded-ness… If only sri lankan’s learned…
Comment by Scourge — November 18, 2005 @ 9:45 am
what majority of ppl? he got over 50% by just under 29000 votes . in kilinochchi polling division (now infamous one where only 1(one) vote was cast) had over 89000 registered votes.
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 9:55 am
The UNP went to bed with the LTTE and got burned. It has no one else to blame but itself. Ranil courted the minorities and their factional, racist “leaders” and promised them a slice of Sri Lankan territory based entirely on ethnicity and nothing else. Hope the UNP learnt it’s lesson - you can’t overlook the Sinhalese majority.
Comment by Harsha — November 18, 2005 @ 10:05 am
then why did they not vote? answer that question if you will. i think they want war and a weak leader like the new one.
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 11:15 am
The UNP cast its lot with the LTTE and lost. It gambled and lost by its own accord. No one else is to blame.
Comment by Harsha — November 18, 2005 @ 11:20 am
if you see the mannar results( with 29% voting ranil getting over 80%) you will see that even if one more polling division in north was allowed (or if the ordinary tamils had more courage) to vote result will be differant. unp was right to cast its lot with the tamils.
mahinda won because large number of ppl were disenfrancised. hardly a democratic result.
yes, ltte wants war and cannot be trusted but ltte just elected our president. you are still glad?
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 11:45 am
You’re reading into it way too much. Have you perhaps even thought that the boycott was exactly what the Tamil people wanted? You’re assuming that the LTTE prevented thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people from voting — forcibly. Do you really think that’s possible? The UNP did not cast its lot with the Tamil people, but rather with the LTTE by giving it great power through the ceasefire agreement to kill whomever it wanted without any consequences. And the LTTE bit the hand that fed it. Mahinda won because that was how the election played out, and that was how the people voted. Learn to respect the people’s choice.
Comment by Harsha — November 18, 2005 @ 1:59 pm
let’s be clear, after arguing ltte defeated unp, you ask me to respect ppl’s choice ? you have to choose one or the other. i for one, accept that m is the president, as ltte wanted.
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 4:15 pm
I didn’t say that the LTTE defeated the UNP did I? All I said was that the UNP made a gamble and lost. I don’t have to choose one or other because I never such a statement or a stand. This is just wishful thinking on your part. And I’m afraid the LTTE would find it hard pressed to obstruct 100 000 + people from voting if they so wished to.
Comment by Harsha — November 18, 2005 @ 6:12 pm
so are you saying tamils who followed (voluntarily in your opinion) the ltte’s lead in boycotting, elected m? i don’t see much of a difference from what i said earlier, ltte wanted m, they got it by their own effort.
btw it is not 100000+ more like 500000+ , that is why unp was right to ‘gamble’. yes they lost, but it is the war and the ltte (more than m) that won. so if you are glad about that, be glad.
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 7:12 pm
electra sorry about intruding on your blog like this. if you want i will stop.
Comment by sittingnut — November 18, 2005 @ 7:23 pm
well M is now the president of the country and not just the half of the country that voted for him. so we have to accept this fate and carry on. as much as i would have prefered R to have won, he did not deserve it.
we can talk about how the litte prevented people from voting in the north and east till we are blue in the face but the fact is that someone who is going to lead our country should have never have had to rely on that segment of the population for victory. the UNP made some rather strategic errors in leadup to the election not the least of which was boasting that they sank ltte boats and taking credit for the defection of karuna and his cronies. this was never going to sit well with the ltte and when they stated that they had no interest in the result of the election and decided to boycott it was to see what the rest of sri lanka thought of the situation. the rest of sri lanka voted and the result speaks for itself. the UNP should have made more of an effort to get the message out to the masses and target the demography that would have swung the vote in the event that the north-east did not vote. when it was obvious that both candidates were pushing for peace R should have changed the focus on to the real issues affecting people, the fertilizer price in itself swung the favour towards M.
like it or not this is how it has all played out, those who dont like it can leave (and i know plenty of people who are) but i for one have hope that this man might be able to make something out of it. there is too much at stake for him right now and he’s going to have to choose a lot of promises to break. R would have been better but thats just tough cheese for us now. the next few months will speak volumes.
the likely scenario is that we will have a general election next year and that there is a very high possibilty of a JVP’er being made PM. i also see an assasination and a return to war. if that worse case scenario doesnt play out then everything will look much the same as it does now.
this is just my two cents, since i know little or nothing about local politics..
Comment by SPiKE — November 19, 2005 @ 5:37 am
So sittingnut, you’re arguing that the LTTE forcibly prevented 500 000+ people from casting their votes? Now this is getting into the realm of fantasy. Perhaps you might want to consider that the Tamil people boycotted the elections out of their own choice, because they felt that they wanted to give a message to the Sri Lankan polity and the world that they do not care about presidential elections in Sri Lanka. Now who are you to scream at them (for choosing not to vote) and the LTTE (whom the UNP was hugging and kissing and recognising as a legitimate organization)?
Comment by Harsha — November 19, 2005 @ 6:43 am
harsha:
whether 500000 ppl decided to boycott voluntarily or not is not the question( imo if they had any courage they could have voted in cleared areas at least, like in mannar). they did boycott bc of the ltte. and it is bc of that m won.
to repeat, are you glad that m won, courtesy of ltte?
spike:
first some facts, less than half voted for m, unp increased their vote by more than 8%(more than 900,000), that is more of a swing than in recent elections, nobody is going to actually give fertilizer at 350 and most farmers know this well, ltte boycotted bc they want a war and a weak leader who can easily be blamed for it.
he is weak bc he appealed to one section of the country and barely got over 50% there, unp was right to appeal to everybody. but warmongers won thanks to ltte.
some ppl who do not like this may leave, others may swallow it and stay, but others may want to change it. (sooner the better)
that is how ppl behave, swallow that too.
Comment by sittingnut — November 19, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
-you can’t overlook the Sinhalese majority.-
SURE. neither can you overlook the tamil minority! they are as sri lankan as any sinhalese. face it, mahinda won with the vote of the sinhalese people, he did not win with the vote of the sri lankan people. who gives a shit, right? who gives a shit about the minorities? they’re this tiny little slice of people that can be dealt with.
-LTTE would find it hard pressed to obstruct 100 000 + people from voting if they so wished to.-
what about what you know compells you to assume this? you’re obviously either ignorant or in denial. if there are boys on bikes bombing the polling stations every 1-2 hours, going up and down the road keeping careful observation of anybody who dared to go into a polling station, and putting up threatening posters that say ‘what are we going to do with those who voted?’ the next morning, then you damn well stay out and stay at home. you’re not going to go out and vote at the risk of getting abducted and murdered. this is the reality harsha. i’m not fabricating this, according to monitors who were in the north, this is how the LTTE forced people to stay at home. they would not find it difficult to restrain 100,000+ people, as you say. it’s a piece of cake for them. terrorize and control. divide and conquer. they did not want people to vote, and they got what they desired. people did not boycott the elections voluntarily, they were forced to do so, for the fear of their lives.
sittingnut : its all good. this blog is open for any kind of conversation. i will notify all participating bloggers if anything gets out of hand.
oh, just deal with it, everyone. even an alarmingly large number of people in colombo, the so-called educated, intellectual, elite class of people, decided that their loyalties lie with mahinda. a fraction more than half of this country decided that they want a facist, racist, obsessive-psychotic government. i think we really got what we deserve. you voted for this, now just sit back and deal with it. so many years ago, the JVP decided that they didnt give a shit about what the minorities think, so many years down the line, their policy is the same, even if the faces on the front-line are different. if people do not remember this, then too bad. if people do not remember the savage deaths of people who made the mistake of being born tamil, too bad.
Comment by Electra — November 21, 2005 @ 5:10 am
Hey Hey Everybody Who Supported UNP and it’s Ponnaiah, Please take a move on to a country which will suite you. And Your fucking style.
Comment by WTF — December 28, 2005 @ 9:11 am
A Big Fuck you from me!!!
Comment by WTF — January 5, 2006 @ 7:22 am
it seems that there are still some countries that receive news 40-50days late and that at least one so called ‘patriot’ has hidden itself there. wonder what he will do when he learns of all the ppl killed under mahinda. he should start getting that news in another week or so i think.
Comment by sittingnut — January 5, 2006 @ 3:22 pm
Harsha go soak your head in Mahinda’s cum… Ranil was the obvious choice of all Sri lankans except a few extremists… Mahinda won with the support of the LTTE and Prabhakaren… Guess it was Mahinda Rajapakse who slept with Velupillai Prabhakaren…….
Comment by Ishan — January 9, 2007 @ 9:11 am
Electra the elite didn’t vote for Mahinda only the farmers and poor folk voted for him… The high upper class are with Ranil….. Don’t worry Mahinda will rot soon… We’ll get in Ranil as President very soon….. Even the JVP brothers hate him now… I think 60% of Sri Lankans hate Mahinda and his family…..
Comment by Ishan — January 9, 2007 @ 9:14 am