{"id":108884,"date":"2013-10-06T00:17:35","date_gmt":"2013-10-05T18:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=108884"},"modified":"2013-10-11T02:48:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T21:18:09","slug":"harimisms-misreading-election-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/harimisms-misreading-election-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Harimisms: (Mis)Reading Election Results"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Malinda+Seneviratne+&amp;x=12&amp;y=4\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/span> <\/a>&#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_105560\" style=\"width: 140px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sunila-abeysekera-and-the-prerogatives-of-the-displaced\/malinda-seneviratne-150x150\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-105560\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"size-full wp-image-105560\" title=\"Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/Malinda-Seneviratne-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"130\" height=\"135\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-105560\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n<p>It is not hard to understand dismay at defeat.\u00a0 It is also natural for the defeated to blame everyone else but themselves.\u00a0 And so, when <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Harin+Fernando&amp;x=9&amp;y=5\">Harin Fernando<\/a><\/span>, UNP MP, takes pot shots at the voters of the Wayamba and Central Provinces, eyebrows don\u2019t get raised.\u00a0 It is after all the utterings of a political neophyte which could result in the party faring even worse in these provinces next time around.\u00a0 No harm to Harin, for he will contest from Badulla.<\/p>\n<p>It is also understandable when vicarious satisfaction is sought, in this instance by cheering the TNA\u2019s victory in the Northern Province.\u00a0 \u2018Someone taught the Government a lesson!\u2019 is easy to say and if that\u2019s all the consolation the UNP can get and if that is consolation enough so be it.<\/p>\n<p>It is not just the Harins of the UNP that are trying to tag themselves to the TNA in order to drag themselves out of political despondency.\u00a0 Just the other day, someone posted an interesting comment on Facebook:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u2018My respect for the Jaffna Tamils has increased since reading the memoirs of various Missionary Wives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Jaffna people had to put up with the people who wrote this stuff. It is so dead boring, filled with ruminations of the goodness of god and the wonders of the universe.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0 This drew the following comment: <em>\u2018<\/em><em>My respect for the Jaffna Tamils increased after the PC elections\u2019<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The commentator did not elaborate on the respect-reasons, but it is not hard to figure out.<\/p>\n<p>The post-election \u2018analysis\u2019 from the anti-Government lobby is full of \u2018Harimisms\u2019.\u00a0 There was the usual tossing around of \u2018military shadows\u2019 in the North with random incidents gathered and called \u2018tips of icebergs\u2019 and other such exaggerations that\u2019s par for the course for these politically and ideologically displaced commentators.<\/p>\n<p>The North, we are told, voted for \u2018freedom\u2019, for an un-clutching of totalitarianism, whereas in the other two provinces, if the voter is past being swayed by post-2009 terrorism-defeat-euphoria he\/she is still prone to preying with goodies, cellphones, sarees and whatnot.\u00a0 Well, if voting for a terrorist mouthpiece that is still to get the tiger out of its collective gut amounts to a vote for freedom, then the people of the North have pretty short memories.\u00a0 What is more likely is that the TNA offered (for purely communal reasons) a better comfort-sense than the UPFA, which too fielded Tamils by the way.\u00a0 Communalist and chauvinistic rhetoric does draw hurrahs but not from the majority.\u00a0 The more \u2018familiar\u2019 in the North (for whatever reason) is the TNA, not the UPFA.\u00a0 There was \u2018rejection\u2019 of course or at least a statement that development though necessary and appreciated is just not enough.\u00a0 If there was \u2018un-clutching of totalitarianism\u2019, then the glorifier of totalitarianism, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=C.V.+Wigneswaran&amp;x=11&amp;y=7\">C.V. Wigneswaran<\/a><\/span> wouldn\u2019t have ended up securing the highest number of preferential votes.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s about painting one\u2019s political agenda (and resultant) dismay on a result and not reading the result for what it could be (and it could be many things, of course).\u00a0 The Wayamba and Central Province voters are painted as a bunch of morons who didn\u2019t know what\u2019s good for them.\u00a0\u00a0 In Wayamba, at least, the candidate with the goodies got 200,000 less than the man who used the party network and who did the hard basics of going out to solicit votes.\u00a0 That must say something.\u00a0 More importantly, if un-shackling of any kind is desired, the question must be asked, \u2018what were the options for these voters?\u2019\u00a0\u00a0 Were these pundits wishing that they voted for some other party?\u00a0 If so, which one?<\/p>\n<p>If the Northern voter is respected with no mention of voters in the other two provinces, it implies a respect for the latter set.\u00a0 What could these voters have done to earn the respects of these ladies and gentlemen?\u00a0 The UNP?\u00a0 The DNA? The JVP?\u00a0 It boils down to political preferences then and immediately all the stories about democracy, unclutching of this and that becomes hogwash.\u00a0\u00a0 More seriously, it is patently arrogant to imply that those who helped produced an outcome not to one\u2019s liking at stupid.\u00a0 It is like saying \u2018I know what\u2019s best for you!\u2019<\/p>\n<p>People\u2019s choices come out of a consideration of multiple factors.\u00a0 We can talk about the political implications of outcomes, but if an election result is a punching bag to vent frustration on that\u2019s not political commentary.\u00a0 One might as well say \u2018Damn! Damn! Damn!\u2019<\/p>\n<p><em>*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/malindawords.blogspot.co.uk\/\">www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":105560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Harimisms: (Mis)Reading Election Results - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/harimisms-misreading-election-results\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harimisms: (Mis)Reading Election Results - 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