Sri Lanka It's Happening

April 4, 2004

Few weeks ago I wrote about hijacks. It wasn't planes or buses that were being hijacked by political platforms. The monks hikjacked the left alliance's anit peace platform and then the alliance turned around and hijacked the UNF's anti war platform while the UNF decided to lie back and enjoy it - with disastrous consequences.

The final count hasn't been released yet but all indications are that the UNF has lost a lot of votes. These votes haven't gone to the UPFA but they have gone to the monks. What's really absurd is that a lot of big businessmen in colombo are said to have helped the monks with their campaigning hoping that that they will eat into the alliances vote banks. After all they were on the hijacked alliance platform.

What they did not calculate was that since the alliance itself was now on the hijacked UNF platform they were lot more palatable to many voters than they used to be. Fot it can easily be said that the UNF platform was the only sensible one around. It did look a bit crowded with two parties on it. Now the UNF may have to step down unless they can do a little wheeling and dealing.