By Rohana R. Wasala

The firm conviction of some young Sri Lankans here in Melbourne Australia whose opinion I have had the opportunity to sound regarding the relative prospects of the two principal presidential candidates appears to be that Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa must and will be defeated at this election. Of course, this statement is based on my personal experience of interacting with a handful of individuals and it should not be taken as indicative of any general lack of common sense or sophistication in these matters among young Lankan expatriates in Australia, who are there, in the first place, mostly as students and professionals in their novitiate precisely because of their knowledge and intelligence.  I am here turning my personal sense of disappointment with the young people that I have come across into an opportunity to explain why I think they are mistaken and why Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa must be re-elected  and allowed to continue the development work that he has initiated amidst many difficulties.

Not that this particular Diaspora’s misconceptions about Lankan politics will show in the actual voting on 8^th January, because few, if any, of these people will travel to Sri Lanka to cast their vote in support of the candidate of their choice. But they can probably exert some moral influence on the electorate back home insofar as their negative view gets communicated to the latter during personal correspondence including through gossip on the social media; that too depends on how ready their relatives and friends in Sri Lanka are to share their extreme naivety, because they are able to assess the situation there accurately at close range. Those among us who really care for our country of birth cannot help noticing an unmistakable contrast between this Diaspora and the better known one in this respect: the latter are devoted to a cause which they have identified clearly, though it is not the right one for the poor suffering people of Sri Lanka, whereas the former having no idea of anything to achieve for their own sake or for the country, inadvertently contribute to the opposition’s unjust effort to topple the government of Mr Rajapaksa at the behest of the neo-colonialist West pursuing geopolitical agendas. There is absolutely no reason why the president should be denied re-election. He provided the necessary leadership for saving the country from terrorism and  initiated island-wide development work even before the end of the war. Arguably, Mr Rajapaksa is the best performing executive leader of government we have had since 1948.  

When asked why they are so ill-disposed towards Mr Rajapaksa, these innocent young men and women that I had the chance to chat with laughed at what they thought was my naive ignorance of or stupid connivance at the great harm that the Rajapaksas have allegedly done and are still doing to the country through their corruption and lawlessness. No one was ready to listen to my counter arguments in refutation of their serious misconceptions and in support of the wisdom of retaining Mr Rajapaksa in the post at this particular time. They shamelessly betrayed their ridiculous faith in the reliability of Facebook and Twitter gossip, and in the accuracy of (mis) information dished out by the plethora of defamatory websites  created overnight for the job as their exclusive sources of information. The plausible argument that the defeat of Mr Rajapaksa will likely reverse the successes achieved against separatism to the detriment of all communities holds little water with them.

In the run-up to the  January 8^th D day, the election battlefield has begun to show a clear pattern of exchange of verbal fire between the opposition and the government: The former exclusively focuses on such issues as alleged corruption, nepotism, authoritarianism, lack of good governance and human rights, collapse of law and order, and economic mismanagement. The government  reminds the electorate of how the UPFA administration under the leadership of Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa delivered the country from separatist terrorism and how even before the war was over embarked on an ambitious development programme which is still underway. The opposition works for a regime change including as a bonus the ouster of the Rajapaksas. The nondescript foreign-backed opposition consists of a motley crowd of disgruntled individuals who are united by a visceral hatred of the Rajapaksas, which has nothing to with the promotion of a meaningful political agenda that is likely to serve the interests of the country. That is why the opposition platform is practically devoid of clear alternative proposals for defeating separatism or for accelerating economic growth.

Although the issues raised by the opposition against the government deserve public attention, these problems cannot be resolved through foreign engineered regime change. They need to be addressed by a stable government under a good leader who can win the support of the opposition in addition to that of his own loyalists in addressing them. In the existing scenario, the beleaguered government’s platform is more firm: It argues for a third term for Mr Rajapaksa on the basis of a proven track record, and promises further progress by presenting a clear blueprint for a new stage of development in the form of the Lowa Dinana Maga (On the Road to Global Success) manifesto; of even greater urgency is the need to prevent separatism from gaining the upper hand again. The opposition plays shy of both these truly important issues, and concentrates on using as its exclusive arsenal unsubstantiated allegations of corruption, misgovernment, media suppression etc to attack the Rajapaksas.

I originally thought that the significant forces/individuals arrayed against the government are either the willing or the unwilling/ensnared agents of the West, which wants, in pursuit of their geopolitical agenda in the region, to engineer a regime change in this small (for them otherwise unimportant) country. Today (06.01.2015) I have reason to believe that my division of anti-government forces into willing and unwilling/trapped categories is erroneous. That is, all of them are willing agents of the West. In this crowd, Rev Rathana and Champika Ranawaka struck me as the most honest individuals, though under a temporary delusion at the moment. The despicable doctored photo scandal (the grafting of former LTTE arms procurer KP’s head upon the neck of the doyen of Sinhala cinema Lester Peiris in a picture taken with the president on his last birthday) has put paid to Champika’s credibility. Inevitably this reflects badly on his close associate Rev Rathana. With their disgrace, their contribution to the efforts of the common opposition (which has been in disarray from the beginning) acquires a negative value. It is belief in such ‘jilmarts’ that will ruin the perpetrating politicians (which is good) and mislead the gullible among the voters (which is unfortunate). But  the vast voting majority in Sri Lanka are mature and intelligent enough not to be misled by false propaganda. So, a Mahinda victory is now a foregone conclusion.