Remarkable changes in political landscape

Dr. Vickramabahu Karunaratne-2018-01-04

The nomination period for the 2018 Local Government election drew to an end last week with remarkable changes in the political landscape. It is going to be full of clashes but with less bloodshed; lots of hard work and campaigning will continue earnestly in the coming weeks.

Candidates were given a choice so are the people. Political debate is hot though not violent as some people predicted. Of course violence was reported here and there; but Police was in control. It might be so in the coming period of the campaign.

Campaigning has begun in spite of few objections taken to the Supreme Court.

How have the early days of campaigning been for the Sri Lankan people? Good in spite of a few bad incidents, says Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara.

He is ready to deal with any aggression on people's freedom! However, some say that the nomination period was eventful for almost all the parties and there seem to have been clashes between aspirant candidates.

Because of these clashes and disappointments, some candidates have become estranged from their parties. They have either joined other parties or have become neutralized or hostile.

This is unavoidable with seat oriented candidates eager to try their luck with the village or ward community that they were attached to and worked for. As there have been close to 100,000 aspirant candidates and their hardcore supporters have been vying with each other during the nomination campaign; whether their luck and dedication was fruitful. Unlike in the past with Manapa dominating, social and political grassroots-level leaders got more chance with the present system. As there were a lot of hopes riding on this process and so many people were fighting for a limited number of places, it is easy for people to get upset and crossover to a side offering palaces without any demand on financial capability. Of course, politics dominate and the masses who are already politically aligned will not change their minds although some of their leaders have changed their minds. Of course, that means fascistic politics is still alive. They are in an alliance, which includes the SLPP- Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna at the centre. So apparently others are not under the SLPP but a part of the alliance. 'The powers of this alliance have been distributed evenly, of course with proportionate privileges to those who have the largest segments of political power. 'That means concentration of power in the fascistic leader. Therefore, irrespective of the numbers of nominees each of sub parties can include differ, they are satisfied with the openings that they received from the leader.

Of course the nomination process appears to have been complicated for all parties. But all those democratically oriented had the support of the rank and file to complete the nominations. In particular young people with education and political awareness were very active. Women were active more than ever before but it appears that it has been more trouble for the fascistic SLPP. Over 10 SLPP nomination lists have been rejected, which is a lot more than that of any other party. Why is this? Is it because of negligence, inexperience or internal clashes? For these questions one fascistic leader gave a hilarious answer.

'If the SLPP had some issues in preparing the nomination lists, it was because the SLPP was handling a lot more aspirants for nominations than any other party. There are political parties who had to struggle to find candidates; for those parties things are easy. But because we had so many applications, the selection process was long and complex. When a process is long and complex, the possibility of minor errors happening also increase, I think this is what happened to our nominations.'

Great! The new theory of permanent revolution is- MORE MASS SUPPORT LEADERS HAVE, LESS REVOLUTIONS WILL OCCUR.