I was ready to rock and write to celebrate the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu in last Tuesday’s elections in Israel. I was joking with my friends that Netanyahu’s defeat in Israel would make me even happier than I was after the opposition victory in Sri Lanka more than two months ago. All of this was not to be. Bibi, as he is known in Israel, managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, different from Mahinda Rajapaksa who pulled defeat from the jaws of victory. Both men went for elections two years too early – one dictated by astrology and the other driven by hubris; both hallucinated about foreign conspiracy against them; and they blamed the minorities for their downturns. Most pundits in Israel expected Netanyahu to come up short, while no one in Sri Lanka would openly say that Mahinda Rajapaksa could lose the election.
by Rajan Philips-March 21, 2015, 7:01 pm 