Thoughts of a pessimist

It’s yet another step of the endless elections Sri Lankan people had to cope with lately. Previous ones were just a part of a disgusting political ball game. But without a doubt this one is the most important and critical one of them all. It is important because it will decide who is going to lead the country for next 6 years. But it is critical because of so many factors.

First of them is the nature of the battle for Presidency. In the Presidential election of 2005, the government declared it as a contest between ‘patriots’ and ‘traitors’. But this time around, it is a contest between ‘patriots’ and ‘patriots’. In other words, it is a contest to select the greatest ‘patriot’. But the government has already labeled the rival candidate as a ‘traitor’ since they own the Patent for the definition of the word ‘Patriot’. However, for the average voter who doesn’t go into that level of detail, this will be a ‘patriot’ versus ‘patriot’ contest.

Another critical factor would be our international relationships. We all know what sort of friends we have on international stage. We have Libya, Iran, Vietnam, Myanmar, Venezuela and few other countries as our direct friends. Are we going to go ahead with them or are we going to win the rest of the ‘important’ countries and move on with all of them? It would be nice to see what kind of a plan the two candidates have towards winning back our ‘lost’ friends. It would be very interesting to see how those countries respond in a situation where our top ranked politicians are either denied or reluctant to enter certain countries, even for highly important international engagements.

As this contest for the Presidency intensifies, more and more war ‘secrets’ might come out because both candidates are so keen to get the credit of the victory written against their names. We already hear top ranks in the military setup and its administration playing the blame game on certain incidents that happened during the war time. In such circumstances, it is more likely those ‘behind-the-scene’ information to come out to gain the upper hand in this tight contest. But it will end up doing more damage to the image of our country.

While the people who supported the war and believed in a military solution will be split between two major candidates, people who were against the war and violence will be stranded in this election. For them, these two candidates would be two sides of the same coin. Anyone who closely observed the conduct of this duo during the war and the aftermath would know it. This was very well explained in the article I suggested to read in my previous post. One might argue that they can vote for a third candidate. But in a two-horse race, what’s the meaning of betting on a pony?

The most critical factor is the Tamil speaking people of Sri Lanka. For the first time in the history of Presidential elections, they don’t have a candidate who can be trust upon. Even if they put aside all the killings, abductions, assaults, harassments and discriminations of the past, can they safely look for the future at the hands of any of these two candidates? The answer is quite obvious when you look at the extremist and fundamentalist groups who are baking the two major candidates.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if they feel like hard done and cornered by the Sinhala speaking majority Sri Lankans when deciding who should lead the country of all communities. They will either be forced to vote for a candidate that they cannot believe in or they will have to stay aside, just being spectators of the drama. I have already heard people sarcastically asking from a few Tamil speaking Sri Lankans who they are going to vote for. To me, it’s not a joke. It’s a very serious concern that they cannot play a decisive role in the election that matters.

Such ignorance and negligence in the past lead to a decades-long war and we all know how much it cost us. Will this be another twist in the history? Only time will tell. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope not.