People have spoken sensibly

The accepted political culture in Sri Lanka is for the voters to go to their MPs for employment and other favours but election time is where the MPs in turn come to people to secure their own employment.

This time however, people have not just elected their MPs but have made the elections an occasion to express their tacit approval of the Mahinda Chintana policies of the Rajapaksa Government.

It is indeed a remarkable feat to have more than five million out of the eight million votes cast or 60 percent (including Kandy and Trincomalee) endorsing the Government in power in a country where there was an institutionalized two party system that often brought the alternative party to power at elections.

Election system

The result again is a further confirmation of the public will manifested at the Presidential Election held two months ago; a result the Opposition chose to cast aspersions on, more out of despondency.

What is even more noticeable this time is, that the people have almost afforded a 2/3rd majority in the Legislative assembly to one political camp, a feature hitherto considered impossible under Sri Lankan election system by political analysts.

In the process the main Opposition party, the UNP, has been decimated to a 29 percent of the national polity; a feat again unprecedented in the annals of UNP since it was formed into a political party in 1947, succeeding Ceylon National Congress.

Come to think of it, there is no mysticism or magic formula behind this achievement.

The main contributory factor that enabled the Government to achieve this electoral success is its successful elimination of terrorism that bedeviled this country for well over three decades.

The Government again required no brains of a rocket scientists to realize that terrorism had to be eliminated if the country is to move forward.

The tragedy is that this simple truth did not dawn on any of the previous Governments to take a resolute stand to eliminate terrorism.

The previous Governments elected, especially those from 1988 to 2005 believed in a policy of accommodating rather than eliminating terror on the mistaken belief that terrorism was the nemesis of grievances experienced by the Tamil minority.

This line of thinking, together with the invincibility of the LTTE, was propagated so stridently and assiduously by the colonial vestiges in this country, that even the people and the leaders of this country believed that the only way to overcome terrorism was to legitimize it by what they called a ‘political solution’.

The country and its people, blinded by this propaganda were so desperate, they almost accepted ‘legitimizing criminality’ as the only way out of mayhem and murder. Thus the nation was trekking down an abyss with no sense of direction and perspective.

National policy

It was the Rajapaksa Government that saw the fraud in this situation and took steps to reverse this trend. It had the courage to question the sacrosanct nature of these ‘grievances’, the driving force of this war, and exposed the LTTE for its parasitical nature in surviving on war.

The Opposition nevertheless derided this reversal in national policy. Within and without the country they continued to condemn this new thinking as ‘anti peace’ driving the country in to a never-ending cesspit of war.

However, after terrorism was finally eliminated, the Opposition instead of admitting their mistaken vision, bought over a prominent figure that spearheaded the war to hide their lacuna in vision.

This man ironically is the same man the UNP derided all that while as a ‘threat to human rights and democracy in the country’ and what was even more paradoxical was the Opposition’s attempt to portray their campaign headed by this controversial figure as a campaign to ‘save democracy in Sri Lanka’. Such was the temerity with which the Opposition elected to insult the average Sri Lankan voter!

Allegations of corruption

Without stopping at that, the Opposition in their naivety cooked up allegations of corruption and nepotism against the government to buttress their chances at the election. But when those allegations were made by the same people and channels that denigrated the nation’s war against ruthless terror, such allegations again lacked credibility in the eyes of the people.

The Opposition then joined the international community to echo violations of human rights in the country. But the people in this country knew all along that the biggest violators of human rights in the country was the LTTE and it is only through the elimination of the LTTE that HR violations could be made accountable and HR law more perceptible.

The last straw of the Opposition was the economy. The Opposition claimed that it was only the UNP that possessed the ‘know how’ and the international wherewithal to develop the country, now the war is over.

But the people in this country have not forgotten how asinine the present UNP leadership had been in displaying its absolute lack of vision by trying to justify and legitimize the worst terror organisation in the world.

Peace is a pre requisite for economic development and hence how could those who have convoluted ideas on peace bring economic prosperity to the country?

International pressure

Finally, in spite of the propaganda hype and the international pressure the Opposition was able to muster the people in this country have evaluated the total picture of the situation more intelligently and have cast their vote accordingly.

The concluding lesson to draw for the Opposition as well as for the Government from the election results therefore is that the average voter in this country is intelligent and reason out issues well and the only way to inveigle them is by being truthful and honest.

thirdeye0910@yahoo.com