“My own brand of improvised opinion polling shows that the Sinhala electorate had no problem grappling with the Fonseka “factor.’’ To them there was no such thing.”………………………………………...........................
By Rajpal Abeynayake
(February 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is one reason this columnist can accept the landslide election results of last week which have left some Colombo analysts gasping for breath. This columnist packed his bags, got into a robust automobile with a cameraman for company, and traversed the core Sinhala electorates of this country prior to the actual date of the voting.
This is why this writer can say that both Somawansa Amarasinghe and Gomin Dayasiri are wrong when they write about this presidential poll. Somawansa had told an interviewer from this newspaper that the election result was due to a ‘computer jillmart.’’
Gomin Dayasiri has written that there was in fact a surge for Fonseka and an initial euphoria for his candidature, which receded due to the wrong campaign by the opposition during the run-up to the election —- which resulted in a last minute reverse surge for Rajapaksa.
Studious freelance sampling
My own brand of improvised opinion polling shows that the Sinhala electorate had no problem grappling with the Fonseka “factor.’’ To them there was no such thing.
Rajapaksa had won the war. People could walk on the streets sans any fear and anxiety now. Therefore, they were going to vote for him. It was as simple as that.
A roughly 70 per cent of the people may have made this assertion to me in the alleyways and outbacks of rural Sri Lanka, a fact borne out also by the vox populi poll we did in this newspaper based on my survey two weeks before the polls.
Our vox populi may have not indicated the landslide in the way the elections actually did — and certainly the accompanying piece did not stress the fact that according to this vox populi, there would be landslide for the President. How could I say so at that point? Certainly this was no scientific piece of opinion polling I was doing - - it was however, a studious freelance sampling of opinion.
I too, such as most of those who ventured an opinion on this poll such as Dayan Jayatillaka got my projections wrong. Most of us still thought that with various other votes factored in, the election was yet poised to be close. However, readers would have noticed a nagging compunction on my part about professing fealty, without any questions asked, to the “close-call’’ thesis.
Over and over, this newspaper alluded to a Rajapaksa Sinhala landslide, and the possibility of one. Here is the relevant quote from Rakshaka’s article in POLITICS UNWOUND on the week of the election (24.1.10): ......Last time he (President Rajapaksa) led in those provinces but not by much; in fact he lost Matale for instance.
So, the trick for him is to get a landslide in the Sinhala heartland — and certainly that kind of landslide is not an impossibility considering the Rajapaksa juggernaut of a campaign and the post war Sinhala voter fealty.
Everything depends on Rajapaksa’s Sinhala landslide.
Que Sera Sera.
So therefore, I have no regrets in saying this much: I got it wrong despite my brief sojourn in the heartland. But because of our vox populi and because of my willingness to talk to people on my own, I can today sit down and believe this result, and say to all the Colombo JVP and Fonsekaite fanatics, that their computer jillmart thesis is grossly wrong-headed.
They may not be able to believe it, but I can. Mahinda Rajapaksa got the landslide he got on January 26th. Look again at our vox populi of the Southern Sabaragamuwa and Uva provinces we did on the 17th of January, on page 5 Lakbimanews. 9 out of 14 featured there said they would vote for Rajapska and gave reasons for their wanting to do so. In fact the number which said they would vote for the president is even more than what was recorded in the sampling, but for reasons of space and reasons of fairplay, we could not feature all of the pro Rajapaksa voices.
So, they can dance prance and preen - - and ridicule me saying that I am a neo Rajapaksaista - - but I will stick to what I saw (as they say in the Sri Lankanism ...) “with my own eyes.’’
The rural voters wanted Mahinda Rajapaksa and nobody else, and the average 60 — 40 gap in each Southern electorate is a prefect mathematical match for what I as a true journalist and not a desk bound pewter-pundit, experienced as reality before election day.
May be I do not have the brains to divine what the collective electorate thinks and the discernment to really believe it, when individual voters say to me, something as plain as “we are going to vote for Rajapaksa’’ . Maybe some of my own inherent biases intervened. But I daresay I had the courage to connect with the people, and saw first hand where their sentiments were.
Harsh critic
As a true journalist, who wants to stand by the truth and nothing but the truth, I stand apart from the foreign jack-in-the -box reportorial rabble and the knee jerk impressionable Colombo journalistic bloc that cannot believe these election results, because they were deskbound, and were too clever for their boots to see the facts at close quarters for themselves.
Because I was say never an anointed Rajapaksa backer and was in fact a harsh critic of the president even, I can therefore, I daresay, infuse more credibility to the message “beat it; the rigging thesis has holes in it’’ than any of the Rajapaksa backers, such as, say, for example, Malinda Seneviratna could.
There begins another separate story.
Yes, I do believe this election, authentically represents the will of the people, and I do not buy into all the poppycock peddled by Scandinavian journalists and their local starry eyed hurrah boys —- and girls —- that Basil Rajapskasa was there at the election secretariat doctoring the results throughout the night!
But I feel that just because the people overwhelmingly voted for Mahinda Rajapaksa, which they did, everybody should not necessarily agree that this particular outcome, with these particular numbers, was the best for the country.
I for one would have wished that if the people wanted to elect MR, they should have done so giving him a less of a margin. But more importantly I believe that just because people called for some resistance to the Rajapaksa juggernaut, they were not necessarily imbecilic Colombo based traitors. It would be a bit too flattering to Colombo based traitors to think of them as arbiters of a 40 per cent of the valid votes registered for the challenger in all parts of the country.
I think those who in some way were not willing to unquestioningly follow the Rajapasksa express, were utilitarians who saw the practical utility of resistance at a time when the one looming possibility was of a post-war Rajapaksa surge of seismic proportions.
So, by some deployment of internal cunning, they, whether they were living in Colombo or in the hinterland, sought to tweak this result and make it a less than an unanimous endorsement for Rajapaksa.
Many of those who did not join the unquestioning preening almost sycophantic wagon of Rajapsksaites are now in fact in the happy position of saying - - yes, we told you so. The overkill regarding banning websites and sealing newspapers etc, may be a portend of things to come.
Many of those who did not take the unquestioning supine path of cheerleading blindly for the Rajapaksas were also those such as us, who were supportive of the war against the LTTE to the hilt, and supportive of both flanks of the military adventure - - the Rajapaksa led stateside flank and the military one, essentially spearheaded by Fonseka.
I say we who did not succumb to the cheerleading blindly, and called for better governance from the war winning government, in fact stood on the right side of history, and I think the best indicator of that ironically is precisely the approximately 58 per cent that Mahinda Rajapaksa finally got.
If the resistance of the rear-guard was not manifest, the disaster of a 70 or 80 per cent for Mahinda Rajapaska may have not just been in the realm of conjecture, it would have been reality.
Such an outcome would have perhaps left such a bitter taste that it would have probably pricked the pomposities even of the jingoists, who preen today and say that they were the sentinels who protected this election by being sycophantic to the Rajapaksas.
It’s the other way about. Those who really protected this election were those who offered the resistance where it was due; they were the sentinels who disallowed naked jingoism from running away with all the clothes of the people’s franchise.
Societal satiability calls for a restoration of equilibrium subsequent to such a massive - and I stress authentic —— 58 per cent vote, an 18 percentage point lead. Today I know that this result is authentic and was not a result of rigging, even though there would have been certain incidents and manipulations such as are bound to happen in this country.
Some legitimacy
But the opposition’s ill informed tirade against these results today acquire some legitimacy because of the way the government behaved as it did before the elections, misusing state media and state property, which today is an accepted fact among government backers as well, as they simply cannot be heard to deny what was the unfolding reality seen by everyone before voting day. To that extent, one cannot escape ones karma.
Having won an overwhelming mandate by reason of people’s overwhelming preference, the burden of proving that the election was in fact fair has fallen ironically on the government, because of its record prior to the polls.
Having shanghaied the electoral process during the campaign, the government today cannot exactly categorically refute the diabolically held falsehood that this election result was not authentic.
Pity, but you reap what you sow, they say.
Post a Comment