Nittewa

though i am part of the nittewa 'team', i realized i have not posted anything here except comments. so here goes.

there can be no doubt about it, ltte has concluded that a victory for mahinda is in their best interest and are promoting an unofficial boycott of the election in order to achieve that. how did ltte arrive at this seemingly illogical and definitely stupid conclusion?

are they counting on mahinda when elected on back of sinhala buddhist chauvinists, to start a war and thus inadvertently allow ltte to strengthen it's loosening grip on the tamil population? or failing that (government is more less broke so can't start a war even if it wanted to) to thrive on the resulting political uncertainty and economic collapse in the south? are they on either case expecting to get the sympathy of the international community back towards them? they are certainly gambling the future of tamils on rather dicey outcomes in any case.

in the first place it is not certain that mahinda will win, even with a boycott. i have posted some election result scenarios in my own blog. from them i am confident that ranil will stay ahead even with only 25% of tamils voting. if minority votes are to affect the outcome, all the minorities must be united and all are more or less behind ranil this time. whether north east tamils will join the others will only have a marginal effect on the final result. more significant is the expected swing of sinhala buddhists from upfa to unp. even a 2.5% swing from 2004 result there will give ranil the victory.

so one effect of the boycott will be to reduce the north east tamils ability to influence any future administration. it will also dent the confidence politicians will place on northeast votes in future elections. thondamans and hakeems are powerful because they deliver the votes in return for getting what they want, by this boycott north east tamils failed to deliver.

another effect will be the loss of sympathy from the peace camp in the south. by this action ltte has shown that it prefers war and it's own power than the welfare of the tamils. already the ngo types are expressing a panicky disappointment with the ltte. nobody will be fooled by the unofficial nature of the boycott and everybody will be more skeptical of the ltte's motives in the future.

nor will the international community be fooled. however stupid and obnoxious a jvp backed mahinda government will be, international community will prefer it to ltte terrorists in the present climate of worldwide war against terrorism. so expect the ltte fronts in the diaspora to get it in the face if it comes to war. and in case of a ranil administration ltte will definitely be in a very weak position when the negotiations start.

there are serious doubt about the ltte's military strength in any case after the karuna's defection. are they willing to lose east completely if it comes to war?

let us hope that ordinary tamils have more sense than the ltte and vote (emulating the ppl in the south in 1988 election who voted in spite of jvp threats to kill those who voted first) .

if not, they have only themselves to blame for whatever crappy deal they will get, whoever gets elected.

posted by sittingnut @  4:19 PM   || 6 opinion/s ||