The gutter politics of the Ruling party – a grasp of straws to hold onto!

The General Secretary of the SLFP, in an election rally in Polonnaruwa for the fight for control of the North Central Provincial Council, takes a 1994 allegation that the current party leader of the UNP had a hand in Chandrika’s Presidential Election win, by destroying chances of the UNP candidate Gamini Dissanayake, prior to him being assassinated.

This was done to discredit the leadership of Ranil Wickremasinghe, so that the integrity of the leader of the UNP is called into question, therefore the whole strategy of the party was not to be trusted. This clutching at historic straws so far back, is barely a rational method of proving inability to lead! After all the current govt. is engaged in wholesale fraud and intimidation, as well as local level corruption of all elected leaders, that what happened nearly two decades ago, should not even come into the discussion in a 2012 campaign, pointedly at the integrity of the present regime to rule anymore.

It is in the end up to the voter to believe whatever they choose to and one hopes they are able to make a reasonable judgment based on their personal experiences, rather than believing what some highly questionable politicians, who have raided the vault of every villager in Polonnnaruwa are able to say on a platform.

It is important that some of the actual issues relevant to the people of the areas that hold the elections are at the center stage. The government insists it is essential to hold elections every few years to test the pulse of the people. If we rational people believe there is any truth in this statement, then it is wrong to spend so much on the elections, when there are grave economic and social issues that take priority, and which are not given the resources needed to tackle them.

A government that plays poker with people’s lives for political survival at any cost should be taken to task. The voter must be made to understand that their leaders are actually making statements that this is only to test the pulse and not to democratically make choices as to how their local Provincial Councils are expected to be run.

I appeal to the voter to look carefully on what is not displayed, as the opposition does not have the funds for posters, and appeal to the voters to make up their minds on a rational weighing of alternatives.