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March 05, 2010 Inner Significance of 2010 Presidential Election - Sri Lanka Siritunga Jaysuriya
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Within Sri Lanka a mass mood is forming of non-confidence in the results of the January, 2010 presidential election. This is similar to the June, 2009 Iran presidential election fraud galvanizing millions of people there to take to the streets in protest. Though we cannot yet say how closely the Sri Lankan election violations resembled the wholesale electoral fraud perpetrated upon the Iranian people, it is absolutely clear that the political environments within which these two presidential elections were held is extremely similar. It is especially significant that both Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapakse were sitting presidents running for re-election. Both portrayed themselves as super-patriots, as the very guardians of their nations’ freedom. The duo’s foreign policies were extremely similar; attempting to win mass sympathy from the local population by continually accusing the Western powers of allegedly plotting to overthrow their ‘patriotic’ government. Both Ahmadinejad and Rajapakse say they eschew alcohol and are devoutly religious. The Iranian regime is infamous throughout the world for its reactionary religious fundamentalist rule through which it has abolished the people’s democratic freedoms. Sri Lanka’s Rajapakse regime, murdering journalists and media workers, burning down newspaper printing presses and media agencies, raining brutal repression upon trade unionists fighting for a living wage, strangling the Tamil people’s national rights, is increasingly being exposed before the world as moving relentlessly towards political dictatorship. An especial similarity in this duo’s rule is the strong belief growing within ‘their’ masses that the presidential election was a gigantic fraud and that the election was stolen from the people. A Fraudulent Presidential Election Normally in any election defeated candidates make numerous accusations of electoral violations; however the mood of outright and total rejection of the presidential election result that is gaining strength amongst the masses of Sri Lanka is something new. The Elections Commissioner’s series of public statements, each contradicting the preceding, has aggravated the masses’ disbelief and suspicion. Regardless of the arithmetical inaccuracies that are said to have occurred during the final tallying of the presidential vote, there is ample evidence of gross electoral violations, right from candidate nomination day to election day itself. Ever since candidate nomination day, all state agencies, including their executive board members, acted explicitly as full-time henchmen for Rajapakse’s election machine. All resources of all government ministries were fully deployed on Rajapakse’s behalf. At the prime minister’s official residence, day and night, tens of thousands of potential voters were given free meals. State officials, ministerial permanent secretaries, and top police and army officers, despite being legally prohibited from campaigning for any particular presidential candidate, cavalierly disregarded the Elections Commissioner’s orders to that effect and openly and publicly campaigned for a Rajapakse victory. To ensure large attendances at Rajapakse’s public meetings, hundreds of public buses were deployed for just those events. Abandoning all pretence of media neutrality and objectivity, government radio and television continually portrayed Rajapakse as a Sinhala patriot and his opponents as traitors to the nation. Thus there is ample evidence of the flagrant flouting of electoral laws by the Rajapakse government, and its commandeering of state funds and property, in pursuit of electoral victory.
The discovery of a stack of cancelled and invalidated ballots near the Ratnapura district main vote-counting centre, and the reporting of such violation to the Elections Commissioner, was recently revealed by the representatives of Sarath Fonseka (the other main candidate of the capitalists). Furthermore the United Socialist Party comrades have received reports that in the districts of Matale, Nuwara Eliya, Ratnapura and Badulla, a presidential candidates list giving false candidate symbols for both the USP’s comrade Siritunge Jayasuriya and the capitalist UNF’s Sarath Fonseka has been printed and distributed. (A photograph of this bogus candidates list leaflet is shown below. There the USP’s symbol, the three-wheeler, has been fraudulently replaced with a butterfly. Well, we are certainly not butterflies! ). This electoral fraud deliberately planned and perpetrated by the government’s district-level leadership has unfairly disadvantaged comrade Siritunge Jayasuriya and also Sarath Fonseka. The fraudulent placement of the USP’s three-wheeler symbol not against Siritunge but against another presidential candidate altogether (one Mohammed Casim) resulted in the loss of votes that would have legitimately gone to Siritunge. Consequently the masses’ growing perception that the presidential election was neither free nor fair, and that the result is not to be trusted cannot be gainsaid. |
Political Dimensions of Election ResultsThe high cost of living, unemployment, corruption, wastage, media suppression, nepotism and economic crisis engenders growing opposition to the regime; however this was not yet sufficient to negate Rajapakse’s posturing, through the war victory, as the saviour of the South’s Sinhala population. The strength of the still-persisting Sinhala chauvinist delirium amongst large sections of the South’s Sinhala population is not to be underestimated. In truth, this presidential election became a beauty contest for deciding which of the two main capitalist candidates would be anointed the true war hero. There Fonseka was relegated to traitor status whereas Rajapakse was crowned war-hero. A significant layer of the masses thirsting to defeat the corrupt Rajapakse regime on the presidential-election were driven to the dead end of voting for the retired general Sarath Fonseka, who appeared for an ‘alternate’ globalized capitalist program. This hampered to some extent our clear and consistent call for an independent left-wing working-class movement and programme. In any case, what the 2010 presidential election result shows, even more clearly than that of 2005, is Rajapakse’s anointment as president only of the Sinhala population. This is truly something Rajapakse ought to be ashamed of. Where the Tamil-speaking people live, in the North, East, and Central Hills, as well as in Colombo, Rajapakse suffered an ignominious defeat. (See the results list below, “Percentage of total votes cast, by electoral district”.). Percentage of total votes cast, by electoral district: Jaffna electoral district: 19.18% It is clear that for the Tamil-speaking people of the North, East, Central Hills, and Colombo, there was virtually no difference between the the two main capitalist candidates. Both Rajapakse and Fonseka jointly led the racist war. Both war-criminal butchers are equally hated by the Tamil people. Nevertheless to oppose the Rajapakse regime’s dictatorial rule, the majority of the Tamil people, however unwillingly, selected Fonseka as the medium through which to express the deep anguish in their hearts. The USP comrades explained that the 30-year war was the poisoned fruit of 62 years’ capitalist misrule and failure; that under capitalism no solution to the Tamil people’s national question could ever be achieved; and that the only solution lies in joint struggle by the working class and poor, North and South, to overthrow the capitalist vampire and together build the socialist future. Unfortunately, however, there was insufficient political space as yet to consolidate such socialist ideas amongst the mass of the Tamil-speaking people. Even in this situation, the significant number of votes won by the USP in the North, East and Central Hills bodes well for the future. As is clear from the USP comrades’ reports from the presidential election period, we knew that the majority of the Tamil people would reject this election as being completely irrelevant to their lives. This prognosis of ours was completely vindicated by the North’s low voter turnout: Of the people who used to live in the above areas, a large number have been made refugees, either within the country or abroad. Another large number of human beings perished due to the war. Thus there is a major discrepancy between the voter electoral roll and the number of true residents. |
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The Election Result – Its Inner Significance Amidst repression by both uniformed state forces and government-organized thugs, in an environment of all-pervading corruption, the presidential election results have been announced. Even through this distorted result, its central characteristic is clear: that the Sinhala majority nationality’s needs have been split in twain. The artist Jackson Anthony and those of his ilk were shameless enough to claim, after the election results were announced, that the LTTE’s Tamil Eelam map, and the map of the districts where Sarath Fonseka won the majority of the votes, were identical! Sinhala-racist demagogues such as Jackson Anthony and Wimal Weerawansa attempt to depict the 6 million voters who voted for Rajapakse as proponents of such poisonous ‘ideas’. These racists’ aim is to coerce the Sinhala population down the blind alley of equating any empowerment of the Tamil people to the dismemberment of the entire country. It is clear that at the forthcoming general election scheduled for March or April, the parliamentarians elected from the SLFP-led UPFA (the bosses’ ruling party) will in the main be reactionaries besotted by such racist delirium. Thus only liars and fools can say that under the second chapter of Rajapakse rule the Tamil people will be presented with an acceptable solution. In that environment the Rajapakse regime, by further aggravating the National question, will again impel the Tamil people towards Secession. Even in this distorted and deformed presidential election result, the votes won by the United Socialist Party, fighting for a socialist programme, are a harbinger of the future intensification of the class war. It would be light-minded to compare in simple terms the 2010 presidential election with the 2005 presidential election. The 2005 presidential election was jointly utilized by the UPFA and JVP chauvinists to inflame racial tensions; the 2010 presidential election marked the enthronement, through the war victory over the LTTE, of triumphalist Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism. We must not forget that that is precisely why Rajapakse held this 2010 presidential election 2 years early – before the Sinhala-racist delirium, inflamed to white heat by the war victory, could abate. The 2010 presidential result can be understood only by taking into account this extreme racist-triumphalist environment in which it was held. The 8352 votes won by the USP at the 2010 presidential election therefore constitutes a higher qualitative value than even the 35642 votes won by the USP at the 2005 presidential election. It must be stressed that in 2010, as in 2005, the USP defeated all the other left (and pseudo-left) candidates. In particular the sectarian “New Left Front”, which collected together various miniscule group-lets that had from time to time split from the USP (None of these opportunists deigned to carry out even one bit of political struggle for their position within the USP; they merely split, and fled to the safe shores of political inactivity.), anointing one as the so-called “Common Left Candidate” amidst a gigantic hue and cry, was defeated by the USP. It is of great significance that the USP continues to win the prime vote amongst all left-wing workers and peasants. It is seen by the majority of the left-wing population as its standard-bearer. The true challenge facing the Left today is to build a mass force led by the working class, winning to its fighting ranks the Tamil-speaking people and all oppressed sections of the population, together with artists and intellectuals, in battle to defend democratic and human rights against the growing juggernaut of the dictatorial, blood-soaked Rajapakse regime. The road to achieving this goal will be arduous, complex and hazardous. Instead of being merely a machine for elections, it must be a stable platform with a common minimum programme of struggle for freedom and democracy, beyond which each participating organization can put forward their own programme, ideas and criticisms of each other. Within such a mass movement, and without, the USP will fight for a comprehensive socialist programme for winning our future! |
There are reports of political thuggery and intimidation on presidential election day. In particular, people arriving to vote in Jaffna and Killinochchi (predominantly Tamil areas in the North) were terrorized with bomb explosions and prevented from voting. With every square inch of land in the North under constant army surveillance, who but the state security forces could have perpetrated this bombing campaign? On top of all this, the government deliberately placed serious obstacles in the path of prospective voters languishing in the Northern camps for the war-displaced. Even though it is perfectly legal to use other forms of identification in lieu of lost National Identity Cards, the government falsely announced that it was not. On presidential election day, until as late as 2:00PM, army officers and government bureaucrats denied essential public transport to the displaced people of the Northern camps, making it impossible for large numbers of them to vote. Those who walked over 40 kilometres to clustered voting centres were told they had to find the specific sub-centre where their vote would be accepted; but they were denied time to find this one-and-only sub-centre and were thus prevented from voting. Thus it is clear that the regime deployed its sycophant military officers to steal the voting rights of the Northern population.
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