It’s Mahinda Rajapaksa ---- a landslide is a landslide

Considering pre election prognostications by almost everyone in the punditry that the 2010 presidential election was going to be a close call, what resulted must indeed be called not a landslide, but an avalanche.
It is known that the foreign media sometimes has a tendency of sensationalising the smallest stories on dissent and discord, but as a newspaper that has a now acknowledged tradition of being very doggedly independent, you can take this from us.
President Rajapaksa won.
He won handsomely.
The people have spoken.
There is nothing that the opposition should do now, but accept the election results, congratulate the winner, and graciously concede the election. Anything less, would not just be unbecoming and churlish, but would also be stupid and babyish.
Of course the election process was flawed and everybody knows that. State media was misused, and there was other malpractice such as misuse of state resources during the campaign period — and some of these excesses were nauseating, and the elections commissioner, no less, bluntly alluded to these violations minutes prior to declaring the winner.
That apart however, 1.8 million more votes — a stunning 1.8 million votes — were received by the president over his nearest rival, General Sarath Fonseka.
That seals it. Notwithstanding the previous issues that concerned the campaign period, the people of Sri Lanka presented themselves at polling booths, and in massive numbers made known their preference for incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa.
The leader of the opposition, the independent election monitors such as Caffe etc., have said that on election day, by and large, the poll was peaceful and essentially above board, barring some notable incidents. They have also added that the contest was by and large free and fair.
But more than everything else, the scale of the victory makes it certain that the voters preferred the incumbent over his rival.
No election can be rigged to this magnitude, unless the opposition can show some clear and concrete evidence of systematic rigging of the outcome to reflect more than a double the votes for the president over General Fonseka in most southern electorates. Nothing remotely close to such evidence has been forthcoming; JVP leader Somawansa Amarasinghe should be ashamed of making lame tentative noises about computer manipulation, without presenting a shred of evidence in this regard.
Rigging an election to preserve this pattern in electorate after electorate, to register a 1.8 million majority would require the brains and effort that could only be thought up by a science fiction writer such as the late Arthur Clarke.
Therefore, gentlemen, ladies, and General — do the right thing. Give up the churlish calls to get onto the street — we are sure nobody in their right mind will do so — and graciously acknowledge the president’s victory. Then, move on — and allow the president to honour the mandate that the majority of the Sri Lankan people want him to deliver on.
We reiterate that any talk of election malpractice and rigging that could have actually changed the outcome of the election, under the circumstances mentioned above, is not just churlish, but also juvenile. Such prattle is not merely un-gentlemanly, but also shows a lack of appreciation of the workings of the democratic process.
Democracy may be the tyranny of the majority, but it is also the will of the majority. Vox populi vox dei — the voice of the people, is the voice of god.
Once a result of a vote is announced and if there is general consensus that the vote was free and fair, it is imperative in the interests of the utility of the democratic process — that the vanquished accepts the verdict of the majority, hard as it may be on them.
This is not to say that this newspaper is downplaying the allegations of malpractice, misuse of property etc., before election day.
But at this level of a majority — of an 18 percentage point lead — anybody who says that this election did not reflect the will of the people to elect Mahinda Rajapaksa as president of Sri Lanka is definitely out of his/her mind.
That being clear, it seems the country — though not some politicians and certainly not the losing candidate — has accepted the fact that president Rajapksa is the winner which is why the Colombo bourse which nobody can accuse of being politically biased, registered a record turnover on the day after the election!
There is certainly an expectation of stability, and President Mahinda Rajapaksa needs to be humbled by this overwhelming public preference for him and temper his second term, with pro-active acts of good governance, and accommodation of minorities and dissenting points of view — the absence of which were the negative aspects of his first term, which was marked by his resounding war success, which is the reason undoubtedly that the people of Sri Lanka in the Sinhala dominated areas voted for him with their feet.
It is expected now, especially taking into consideration Sri Lanka’s past voting trends, that president Rajapaksa’s governing coalition will sweep the boards at the forthcoming general election. An intimidating majority — perhaps close to a two thirds or even more than two thirds is assured — despite the difficulty of obtaining one under Proportional Representation.
There will be immense power at the disposal of the president and his governing administration, power which the president would be able to wield, if in good health, until 2017, considering that he has the rest of his 2005 term to finish.
With this enormous amount of power at his disposal it is imperative that he governs to accommodate rather than exclude the disparate elements that make up our social fabric — be they polarised ethnic groups or political party formations.
Please, to the President’s detractors we say, graciously concede power to the winner, and from this day onwards, may the winner be gracious in matters of administration and governance reflecting the faith reposed in him by the people. The people of Sri Lanka desperately want a bright — not blighted — future.