Deane's Dimension

Pre D-Day

For many Sri Lankans tomorrow will be Decision Day. Approximately 75 percent of 133,27,160 registered voters in Sri Lanka will go to the poling booths to decide whom they will refer to as ‘the president’ of the country for the next six years.

I on the other hand will be taking part in this whole ‘voting’ business for the first time. Being only 19, I’m kinda lucky that my democratic rights are reserved so promptly by the state while many of my friends are still made involuntary observers. This is possibly due to the fact that I knew our gramey quite well. (grama seva niladari ..hmm in English it’s probably Village Service Officer, probably not bt,.. you get the idea)

As for the whom to vote for… well if you have known me for like a day, you would know that I vote for RANIL. I even played my part in his campaign.

In fact unless the UNP dramatically changes its policies and/or there is a credible alternative to the UNP, unlike the impractical extremists JVP/JHU/SLFP alliance, my vote is probably a life-time UNP one.

the more interesting question is not whom I am voting, but who the rest of the country will vote for, i.e. who’s gonna win this damn thing tomorrow?

Well I know this question has been popped many a times but as much as people want to be, nobody’s sure. In fact the very reason I want to create this blog today was the fact that I want to make a prediction on tomorrow.

The main problem today is, that the opinion polls in this country cannot be fully trusted even less so, the SMS polls. If you are big on the number game, do all the number crunching you want, and you can probably turn the result either way (actually if you are middle-minded. There’s a lot to assume, and assumptions can be erroneous.

The only other source of enlightment is the media; the media again in Sri Lanka can hardly be called impartial. Even so, you can at least call some idea particularly through News Papers. There is a particular column I like to read in the Sunday Times, written by Rajpal Abeynayake. Now Mr.Abeynayake usually like to pinch, (sometimes even slap and punch) the UNP, and Ranil in particular. (other favorites include Milinda Moragoda, but that’s irrelevant) last Sunday in his article, he did a sort of number crunching which resulted in a result in favor of Wickramasinghe. In fact many pre-polls does seems to indicate there is a greater chance of a Wickramasinghe victory, the pessimists (also called the mahinda camp) would say as they are now ramping on about the ‘apparent’ boycott of North Eastern Tamils of the polls, and that would mean sure death in the polls for Ranil.. with all due respect to mathematics, I think the formula for the winner just got a little complicated, and there seems to be no one with the correct head to solve the it.

So in these times of desperation, there’s only one place to go, what does your gut say, and my gut says Ranil Wickramasinghe.

The country needs Him

Deane J