Nittewa

Has anyone noticed how Mahinda has become President in pretty much the same way George W Bush won his first term? Here's the George W Bush DIY Guide to Winning A Presidential Election:


Step One: Disenfranchisement
Bush Jnr. used his brother in Florida to take people off the voter lists. They systematically removed people who would vote Democrat. In Colombo and in many urban regions in the South the UPFA Government has done the same thing. In Colombo alone there are over a 20,000 people who were taken of the voter registration lists. The UPFA knows that Colombo always votes UNP, and that there was a afir chance that by taking all these people off the lists they would put a serious dent in the number of votes the UNP would get in the capital city.

While ballot box stuffing, impersonation and rigging are the most common polls violations in Sri Lanka, this time systematic disenfranchisement may have played a bigger role. Several observers say that even though not too many people were taken off the lists in each electorate, throughout the country this figure adds up. While all the other forms of election fraud and election related violence are monitored by several independent monitoring groups to a large extent, no one really keeps an eye on the voter lists.

The elections commissioner Dayananda Dishanayake admitted that many people all over the island had not received their polling cards but that they could go to the polling centre with their ID and cast their vote. This move was suspicious from the beggining but no one really questioned it because it has happened before. The postal deparment in Sri Lanka which has the responsibility of distributing the polling cards isn't really dependable. But what no one noticed was that this time it happened on a massive scale and affected all parts of the island.

Step Two: Making The Other Guy Believe He Lost.
By declaring himself the fifth President of Sri Lanka even when the results of 35 electorates were to be announced was a very cold and calculated move by the Mahinda camp. By shouting about their victory early they prepared the UNP to accept defeat, even before they had really lost. With Bush's first term we saw how the GOP began to party hard before the Florida results came in.

If they believe they have won, and if they believe in loud enough and strong enough then the other guys are going to believe they have lost. This was the biggest mistake made by the Democrats back then and now by the UNP here.

The UPFA took maximum advantage of the fact that there were people within the UNP who expected Ranil to lose and knew that power struggles would begin within the party the moment they figured they lost. Feeding this fear they orchestrated a massive mixup within the UNP and they could not get their act together to demand for a repoll in the North and East, in pretty much the same way the Democrats couldn't get their act together to ask for a repoll in Florida.

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Perhaps this is a sign of the way Mahinda plans to rule this country for the next 6 years. The sad thing is that going by how Sri Lankans vote he's probably going to be President for the next 12 years. Two terms is the standard. Premadasa had only one term, but then he didn't really lose a re-election campaign did he?

So, is Mahinda also going to read the George W DIY Guide Books on Invading Other Countries, The Theory of the Pre-emptive Strike, Lying To The Whole World etc?

Maybe we could invade the Maldives. I don't like Gayoom. I don't think Mahinda likes him either (Does Mahinda know who Gayoom is?). And they are Islamic State. And Gayoom is a ruthless dictator. And we know they have secret underwater nuclear facilities with warheads pointed at the Peradeniya Gardens, Sinharaja, Yala, Wilpattu and Uda Walawe (they envy our biodiversity, they have only coconut trees). And not many people would care too much.

posted by Morquendi @  1:59 AM   || 6 opinion/s ||