Sri Lanka It's Happening

April 2, 2006

Well it didn't quite turn out that way. The so called local government elections were actually held on the 30th of March and most of the results were released by the 31st. But it was only by the 1st of April that we knew which bunch of fools had been voted into take care of garbage collection and cleaning the sewers.

This is easily the election that has aroused the least amount of public interest in recent times. A couple of weeks ago if you asked a man on the streets when the election would be held he wouldn't have known the exact date.

Many people expected the UNP to do very badly. And that expectation was fullfilled. People also expected the former terrorist organization the JVP to do well, that expectation wasn't fullfilled with the JVP managing to win just one local council.

The election itselfs was an utter farce. Voting was postponed for around a quarter of the council either because they are located in the LTTE held areas or because of dozens of law suits filed by the polical parties against the elections department.

The UNPs nomination list was rejected for the Colombo Municipal council. One wonders how a party that cannot even get it's nomination list right for the most important council can hope to govern the country, but then the PA, the party that does govern the country couldn't get their list right for their fortress Gampaha.

Posted by raditha at April 2, 2006 5:16 AM