Columbians Rejecting Peace – is that a sign we would have rejected Peace under similar conditions too?

When opinion polling showed that the Columbian President would win the Peace Deal by 66% having brought the UN Secretary General & Raul Castro, to the white wearing ceremony of peace, the reality was it was rejected by the people.

Obviously, as the former President opposed it, and intimated that the terrorists were literally getting away with murder! It must have polarized the electorate along political lines, with the natural sentiments going to the Opposition, on an anti incumbency bent. So the double whammy of the result, as a vote against the present President, as well as the electorate rejecting the peace treaty, as being too lenient on the rebels despite a 50 year war, and 200,000 dead on both sides, leaves the international community at a loss to explain it. Wondering what next!

An added spoke was the idea that their unpopular President was in line to get the Nobel Peace Prize, and the vote was an attempt to stop that happening. This could obviously also be added to the rationale!

Nevertheless it shows the way electorates think, when it comes to referendums, even if they make sense to an international community, the electorate as in Brexit, rejected the flow. In Sri Lanka’s case, had there NOT been a complete war victory to end the LTTE, I doubt the electorate would have voted for a peace under any circumstances, that gave favorable status to the terrorists. In retrospect, whatever the attitude of the International Community, this was the only practical solution, despite the continuing attempts by the Diaspora to expose the wrongdoing of the Forces that defeated terrorism, no matter if there were or NOT any wrongdoings!

That is all the more reason for the GOSL to immediately finish off this unfinished business, without it dragging on any longer. Otherwise the original objective of winning can also be clouded by the Diaspora. We learn from such incidents.

The Columbian Result is an eye opener to people who cannot comprehend how a country could reject peace and perhaps open themselves to another resumption of a brutal war. It is a risk the people took in this referendum, that MUST have polarized the Country.

One of the real hazards of referendum are that a 54,000 margin, on a low turnout can change the course of a Country’s future, and it is this margin that in the end made the difference, highlighting the power of the fence hitters in decision making once the committed electorate is spoken for. It is this fence that astute politicians are trying to reach to change their minds.

It is also a parallel we MUST see in the Trump Clinton campaign that the fence sitters will ultimately decide who will be in the White House.

40% of the voters have determined loyalty to Trump and another 40% to Clinton, so what do you do to ONLY convince the balance 20% on which way they should cast their ballots that make the difference in the whole election!

There is NO value actually in being a committed this or that, because it is NOT them that make the difference in the fortunes of the Country. It is the FLOATING VOTER and that floating vote can go this way one day, and that way another, meaning that up to the final vote, a small unrelated scandal or misstep, even a cough on Hilary’s Throat at the final debate could propel the Donald directly into the White House, and the whole election hinges on a COUGH.

The vagaries of democracy is now understood by the reader to be quite unpredictable in this era where the electorates all over seem to be polarized on SIMILAR LINES. This polarization, where most of the electorate are spoken for, leaves just a few people in the decision making seat in reality, and one could hardly call it democracy. The other factor being education, and information to determine the reasons whether rational or irrational that make the difference in the outcome in the end.

People’s attitudes change on a daily basis, and how to manage this is the nightmare pollsters have to contend with, and if one takes the example of the Columbian referendum, a sure knowledge of losing could have brought out more voters who backed the President, but who were told the better luck was with the incumbent, did not bother to vote. The pollsters got it horribly wrong and setting up complacency upon the supporters of the President alone dealt the hammer blow to his cause. The importance of compulsory voting emphasized in this case!

As in Brexit, this vote, and the US Election, there are similarities due to the sophisticated nature of the voter. In Hungary this morning, their simple rejection from even absorbing ONLY 1,500 refugees in TOTAL is an example of how people can easily be swayed in making a decision that in the long term will come to haunt that economy. They potentially rejected well educated people who could have contributed enormously to that economy. It’s called fear mongering on the part of the leaders to get their voters to blame the Syrians for all the ills of ISLAM!