Rajapaksa Is Not A Darling Of Minority Voters Anymore

By Muheed Jeeran -

Muheed Jeeran

Presidential election 2015 is getting heated now and an unexpected arrival of the General Secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) as the common candidate has shaken the ruling of UFPA and the chance of winning the third term by the incumbent President. Even before the arrival of the popular grassroot man of SLFP’s Maithripala Sirisena’s arrival, analysts were predicting the outcome based on two groups of voters such as important of ethnic minorities and mustering the Sinhalese nationalist voters will be a crucial factor for any presidential candidate to touch the finish line of 50% plus one vote in the upcoming presidential election. 

The opposition is very much hopeful of getting a better share from the ethnic minority voters but the opposition had a challenge of finding a candidate who can muster the support of Sinhalese nationalist voters which is nearly 74% of the total population of Sri Lanka. The arrival of Mahithripala Sirisena as a common candidate, answers their long standing question of challenging the Incumbent President without any doubt as Mahithripala now known as the people’s man as the ability to capture grassroot voters.

Incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa had a great hope on winning his third term by getting Sinhalese Buddhist voters and he is aware that winning the hearts of the ethnic minority is not an easy task now as he failed to shut the mouths of some extremist Buddhist groups who have suddenly risen up against the Muslims and Catholic Community on certain issues. Muslims and Catholic people of Sri Lanka waited with great hope that the incumbent President will heal their wound, however, he failed on it by implementing his typical Presidential Commission which never gave any results in the past.  Well now the once hopeful communities have totally lost the faith of the President as a leader, the one with executive power has failed to deliver the goods to the minorities when they were fearful of these threats and verbal assaults by certain extremist Buddhist groups. After all these political shake ups during the last two weeks, I noted the Incumbent try to put a cushion towards the minorities but it looks like he understood that his strategy is not working at the moment and may be it won’t until January 8.Read More