Postpone Presidential Elections

According to the latest information available to us that has not been challenged, I as a patriotic citizen of this country personally think that it would be in the best interests of not only MR but also the entire country that the Presidential elections should be postponed indefinitely to a more favourable time for the following reasons:

(1) The dust that has been kicked up with the 16 reasons will take a long time to settle and it is impossible to know what will take place between now and the Presidential elections if it is going to be held before the general elections.

(2) Ranil had 47% of the votes at the last Presidential elections. Only those who want to be in the good books of the President will tell him that Ranil will have only around 30% this time. Considering the number of Tamil political party wins at the last Provincial Council elections in the North and the East which are today all Ranil’s, his vote bank has not diminished in those provinces. Of the 250,000 IDPs only some will vote for MR while the Colombo Tamils will in general vote against MR. So MR’s Tamil Vote Bank is not as secure as he may think.

(3) Most of the 500,000 votes that formed the JHU will not vote on election day because the unethical conversion bill was not written into law. They will stay at home. That is a massive loss for MR. If MR were to take in to the SLFP the high jackers of the original JHU he will have other problems connected with it from the 500,000 who worked so hard to get protection for the Buddhists.

(4) MR will have to pay the price for not prosecuting provincial councillors and government servants for robbing and depriving the innocent poor Sinhalese villagers of their rights in remote rural areas. Details are available everyday on MTV and Sirasa. Most of these victims will vote for Ranil

(5) According to journalist Janaka Perera the UNP and the Catholic Church have a written agreement whereby Catholic votes will go to the UNP in return for what the Church can do.

(6) Displeased the Mahanayaka Theros by not giving the Buddhists the safeguards they wanted especially in the form of legislation preventing unethical conversions. This probably was done fearing the loss of support from the Christian Church but the Christian Church will never vote for MR

(7) The President’s statement that he will implement the 13th Amendment in full has driven shivers down the spine of all patriotic nationalists. While they all want MR to be in power they will not be happy to give him a two-thirds majority because they know that devolution in any form based on ethnicity will be the end of the unity in the country. People fear that the two-third majority will be used to remove the unitary state clause in the Constitution. Devolution of land and police powers as proposed by minister G.L Peiris in his Draft Constitution amounted to the granting of outright Eelam.

(8) The President has said on many occasions that there are no Sinhalese, no Tamils, no Muslims, no Burghers and no Malays and all are equal. That is not consistent with implementing the 13th amendment which is not even devolution on an ethnic basis but outright Eelam in practice.

There are many other things that should be done to please MR’s vote bank but the immediate requirement is an independent police commission headed by 9 Supreme Court judges and a special prosecuting authority under the independent police commission. Why I suggested 9 is that 3 is too small and the few individual opinions will prevail. Six is OK but 9 would ensure better judgement and 13 becomes too unwieldy.

The euphoria of the elimination of the LTTE will remain for quite some time but unless the above problems are addressed the votes may not be forthcoming and that is the danger at the Presidential elections both for MR and the country.

- Asian Tribune -