How we all dance to one man's tune

When president Jayawardene introduced the 1978 Constitution it was the common belief of the opposition that it was undemocratic and at the best interest of the governing party than the country. Only UNP defended the constitution but after getting the taste of their own medicine UNP also came to the stance that there should be serious amendments to the constitution. Run upto the 2005 elections almost anyone agreed that a new constitution should be introduced. Almost every presidential candidate and noticeably President Rajapakshe promised to abolish the executive presidency and introduce a new constitution.

Then the government had the 2/3rd majority in parliament but rather than introducing a new constitution government went ahead with strenghening it more by removing term limits but the reaction of the public to this broken promise was dull. Yes dull to the point I am only writing this now.

Now how did this constitution that we all despised suddenly became a good this to be continued? Wasn't it because one man, loved it, needed it and just could not throw it away? Should we continue to call ourselves citizens?

TNA would and should join the government

This government and Mahinda Rajapakshe are here to stay. Tamils in North East are sick of politics and those who are not that disgusted to go and vote in the election day are choosing TNA as their preferred representation. We have to live with those two facts.

Government is desperate for a 2/3 majority in the parliament so they would not have to go against the constitution to make sure president Mahinda Rajapakshe can continue after his second term (Yes all the bigwigs of SLFP who are dreaming of becoming the SLFP leader and president of the country or at least the Prime minister after Mahinda take note of that). Even with the inevitable landslide win that is just around the corner for the government it is not likely to receive a 2/3 majority. So as of now Basil must be hatching the next plan on how to achieve that 2/3 majority. What I suspect is that the plan will be a three staged one.

1.) Use all force, both legal and illegal to get as much seats as possible.

2.) Direct any UNP pm's who can be wooed to the government side with either money, blackmailing or perks to contest under the UNP led front and then cross over after the elections.

3.) Since it is unlikey to gain a 2/3 majority even after those try to get TNA to contest under the government because seats of North East are crucial.

I think TNA contesting with the government is a good thing for several reasons. First this hate mongering politics should stop. TNA should try to align with main stream politics of Sri Lanka. With the mighty propaganda machine of the government there is no chance for any one other than the government to side with TNA. The moment TNA side with any other major party, the government would start it's fear mongering campaigns. For national conciliation best thing is government and TNA to join hands.

Next thing is for those who are willing to look at the truth in eye to understand that Mahinda is also just another politician. That he too would join with anyone just like Fonseka, Ranil or any other main stream politician. That opposition been traitors and government consisting of patriots is just another propaganda stunt to instill fear and suspicion in peoples mind. This could be less important for many but not to me. Until the public is able to read the politician that rule them correctly they would always be fooled.

But those who are so desperate not to see the nudity of the rulers would come up with various theories mostly parroting those that would be originated in government media. They would argue that TNA joining Mahinda is a complete different thing than TNA joining Fonseka.

As much as I like national conciliation I am delighted with opportunities for the public to understand the true landscape of politics too. So I support TNA joining the government.

Hoping with statistics

I hope Sarath Fonseka would win the presidential election that would be held in 26th, two days from today. These two days are crucial. Although campaigning should have ended by 12 pm yesterday government media would continue to campaign for current president for these two days as well.

Fonseka has a real chance of winning this race. Those who pretend to know the probable mandate of the public is only counting on the past provincial council election results. Provincial council results are not effective enough to be concerned with because most of opposition supporters didn't vote because they didn't want to be in loosing side and political landscape has changed dramatically following Fonsekas entry as the common candidate, specially in the last few weeks.

I would try to analyze previous presidential election results and try to come into a conclusion about the possible outcome this time around.

Following are statistics of 2005 in millions

Votes of Mahinda 4.8
Votes of Ranil 4.7

JVP votes went to Mahinda 0.4
JVP votes that would go to Mahinda this time around because of Wimal's split and discontent about their current political allegiances 0.1(25%)

After change of JVP votes

Fonseka 5.0
Mahinda 4.5

UNP votes that would be cast to Mahinda this time 0.4(which is 8%)
SLFP votes that would be cast to Fonseka 0.1(whic is only 2%)

standing after vote changes between the camps

Mahinda 4.8
Fonseka 4.7

North votes that were not casted previous time 0.5(This is a rough guess, not sure about number of votes and not sure they would go and vote in high numbers or how many would go to other candidates)

New Northern vote split between two
Fonseka 0.33 (66% of votes)
Mahinda 0.17

After northern votes
Fonseka 5.03 (50.3%)
Mahinda 4.97 (49.7%)

Which deliveres Fonseka a slight lead against Mahinda.

I was biased towards a fonseka win during the calculations, I changed my mind against some statistics when it looked like Mahinda would lead Fonseka. But I gave Mahinda more advantage when calculating, like in JVP vote split where I gave 25% split for Mahinda and in vote changes between UNP and SLFP i gave 8% unp vote changes against only 2% of SLFP vote change.

So people if you want change over more of the same keep that hope.

Let's hoist the national flag minus the buddhist flag

The conventional military force of LTTE is made to rest, with almost all the top leadership killed. People are celebrating all over the place, and rightly so. Let's hoist the national flag everywhere possible and feel proud. But While doing that let's remove the Buddhist flags that could be seen along with the national flag on some places. Don't bring Buddhism into this.

Hypocrisy of west

I see that many people are troubled by the hypocrisy of west these days. It is like they have been expecting the west to act differently. The west is hypocritical and it would continue be that way. Even if they change their stances on our situation for something else they would continue to be hypocrites. Anyone care to think why is this? Because politics is hypocritical, inherently it is so. Do any of you think we are less hypocritical than them? Is India better than them? People see double standards in white skinned westerns than in brown skinned Indians when the reality is they are the same(actually this should be racism right?). They are lecturing us to show that they are more powerful than us and to please their voting blocks. What about china? I think I should dedicate one full post for the interests of Chinese.

Politics is all about power, where the poor and the weak can't do the same thing that the mighty and the powerful can do. That is why super power US can kill afghan civilians by air strikes freely while poor south asian Sri Lankan government can't kill tamil civilians. Of course US government would apologize but would they do anything to stop them? I doubt, to them US lives are more valuable than afghan lives. When it comes to SL we would not even apologize or acknowledge about civilians causalities for that matter. But we do shout about afghan civilians. Hypocrisy anyone?

When fighting against LTTE we want the whole world to stand by us, to call every terrorist a terrorist but when Israel is fighting against Hamas even Mahinda is attending Palestine solidarity movements. The main interest of those movements is Muslims votes. Double standards anyone?

We see that police going over the law to kill suspects. But when Saman kumara Ramawickramas and Piyasiri wijenayakes do the same, police go over the law, this time to protect them. Isn't these double standards? When the sinhala youth take arms it is called an uprising but when Tamil youth take arms it is called terrorism.

Now is the most difficult part, Colombo hypocrisy. When a bomb goes off in colombo and another in wanni what has more effect in military operations? Isn't there a higher value on wealthy colombian lives than on those poor people in wanni or Monaragala for that matter. Aren't these double standards?

It is time for people to fight this elitist, corrupt and selfish system. Rather than making this a washington vs comlombo thing it should be US citizens taking on Washington and Sri Lankans taking on Colombo. Fighting to make Washington and Colombo more accountable not only for americans and Sri Lankans but for the whole world.