Er, what about the nation? ...

In a couple of days or more, my fellow Sri Lankans will choose their president. While this exercise alone says volumes about the resilience of the democratic process in a land which has seen at least a few 'patriots' who dared question that sacred process (when they were in power, of course!) that's another story, for another day.

What disturbs this writer, now inhabiting that comfortably flexible place called freelance-land, is the extent to which otherwise sensible people would go simply to capture power or topple a popular incumbent whom they envy or dislike ...

It is trite but it is true: politics makes strange bedfellows. Still, this particular king-size (kingmaker?) bed that the opposition is crowding on to could be one for the record books ...

So, what gives? How do you explain yesterday's fearsome tiger siding with the big game hunter who was hunting it to the point of extinction? Or the UNP with its own record of right-of center and at times plain full-throttle, free-enterprise policies snuggling up with a socialist, selectively-revolutionist people's party with a painful history of armed struggle?

As Philip Fernando, another proud product of Lake House and a senior journalist now living in the Land of the Brave, notes in one of his columns in the Daily News, it's that age-old reason: all these new 'friends' have a common enemy named Mahinda Rajapakse ...

To the independent observer, whose only bias is toward a unified, peaceful, prosperous Sri Lanka, all these machinations smack of a collective anger driven by plain envy.

President Rajapakse's success in wiping out terrorism while keeping the economy on an even keel has become too much to bear [just this week the IMF elevated Sri Lanka to middle income nation-status]. Thus, the only thing that matters is that he be denied a second term. Such other bothersome things as the national interest must decidedly take a back seat.

The surveys, however, are telling a different story. One such, led by Professor Rohana Luxman Piyadasa of the Kelaniya University, gives President Rajapakse over 67 per cent of the vote. It also gives the president 70 per cent of the vote in Colombo, despite the UNP's flawed analysis that it generally has the urban vote in the bag.

Social scientists, journalists and other close observers of the scene are obviously sensing a paradigm shift in Sri Lankan politics. Apart from the steady decline of the UNP, there are also signs that the Tamils, who have endured so much, are looking for pragmatic leaders outside their community.

A good many already seem to have found such a leader in a president who addressed them in Tamil recently. What was said in a previous piece in these columns bears repeating: a united nation, as envisaged by Mahinda Rajapakse, might well elect a Tamil president in the not-too-distant future.

So listen up, guys ... put all the envy and the anger on the back burner, or better yet, turn off the burner. Let's get together and let this good man finish a good job.
Don't you think Sri Lanka deserves it? ...

- Asian Tribune