new sri lankan prime minister

there is better news today than in the past few days. politicians, it seems, do care for our well being after all.

heard about the chappie who promised us cows if he was elected as president? 25,000 people were quite disappointed by the lack of bovine intervention. on the brighter side of things, the new president has just appointed ratnasiri wickremanayake as prime minister. rw when he was pm in 2000 / 2001 once piqued our flagging interest in government by telling us to make more babies. this was in the context of his alarm at the declining population due to the war and other non happenings. he also promised to get us water from the sea but here i think he was merely being a sci fi prophet a la arthur c clarke.

on balance, i think i will take the more babies thingy than the cow. and water from the sea would do as a nice bonus.

so perhaps things are not quite so gloomy as i first made out. there will always be the funny guys to cheer us up. there is hope for sri lanka yet.

link to tamil net

i have provided a link to the tamil net web site under the links section of this blog. it took the run up to the elections to make me realize how biased the sri lankan web sites on my links section were towards a particular point of view. try as i might, i could not find a site which is truly balanced. therefore, the link to tamil net. hopefully by accessing the different sites one may be able to figure out at least some semblance of what is fact.

it's a quiet sunday in sri lanka. the hot tropical morning has made way to a gloomy, rainy eventide. as a united nation, the country is looking down a barrel. it's one of those rare times when you hope you are absolutely wrong but with that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach, you know you are not.

a new era?

crackers are going off around colombo as prime minister mahinda rajapakse wins the presidential election in sri lanka. the ltte helped of course by preventing people from jaffna and the wanni from voting in the election. however, clearly, the sinhalese majority decided that a tougher line needs to be taken with the rebels - even if this could mean war. in addition, they felt that the marxist jvp party could be trusted to take on more power in the country and for good measure are obviously comfortable with a controlled economy. even on the southern coastal belt where the lack of government action for those effected by the tsunami was clear, the support for rajapakse was overwhelming. the message is clear as mud. sinhalese first, country second.

check this link from reuters for an immediate comment on the result ( Link)

check this link for a detailed analysis of the results (Link)

as for moi, i am going home to refer my old gardening book on "how to grow manioc for dummies" and my copy of "how dummies survive a war".

sri lanka presidential elections 2006

the choice before the people at the sri lankan presidential elections 2006 is pretty clear cut and straightforward. open economy and peace talks with the ltte ( a.k.a. ranil) or controlled / closed economy and a hard-line / nationalistic approach with the ltte (a.k.a. mahinda). as a bonus, along with the latter one also gets the jvp ( sinhala marxist party) and the jhu ( sinhala buddhist clergy party). as usual, it is said that the election will be the most decisive in our history. but one must take this with a pinch of salt. all elections in sri lanka have been ( and will be) called that. what is likely is that we will be stuck with our choice for 11 years.

neither of the choices are charismatic. ranil is pragmatic and not very practical but a good administrator. mahinda tries to be all things to all people and is consequently the more popular. president chandrika was (is) popular and since 1994 that hasn’t gained sri lanka much currency.

my choice is clear. i believe that the sinhalese must talk to the ltte and must necessarily grant them some kind of autonomy. i hate war. and should war break out, it will not be me would be on the battle field but the sons and daughters of those in the south, the north and the east. therefore, i cannot vote for war. i hate manioc. despite it’s obvious drawbacks, an open economy is the only way forward for the country. controlled / closed economies will simply not work in island sri lanka. we have experienced that in the past.

on the 17th of november the people will decide. and this time around they will get what they vote for.

silly point

by gad, sir! it’s simply not cricket, what? the osc chat line is no longer the preserve of us males and in america there is the distinct possibility that the female of the blighted spices will be president sooner rather than later. even the mcc has started admitting women into their hallowed precincts. as mentioned in earlier rants, that holy of holies, my toilet, was invaded earlier this year. which is why, until recently, cricket commentaries on tv were the last exclusive enclave of the alpha male.

i mean to say, we could have philosophical discourses on tickles to fine legs, long legs, bowling a maiden over, not to mention no balls without having to delve into anything remotely pink. imagine my horror then when i tuned in the other day to the new zealand vs. south africa one day international and heard the alpha male going on about the shape of the clouds, the color of the trees, the russet sunset and so on. the reason soon became apparent when a few minutes later an alto voice came on and this person proceed in the same vein. there were gasps and bits of poetry and screams and even a comment about how handsome one of the blokes on the field looked. i was quite prepared to live and let live. a clip later the camera panned on the commentators and there she was.

prince charles in america yesterday said that changing global weather patterns is the most critical challenge facing mankind. he is only partly right.