I’ve been watching the Republican campaign for US President with alternate horror and glee. It’s kinda like Jersey Shore where one winner gets to be President and have nuclear weapons. Kinda awesome, but fundamentally really, really bad. You’ve got a bunch of crazy people, and one person (Romney) pretending to be crazy. This, however, is the best description I’ve seen so far:

I’ve been going thru the election results for the recent local government elections. While the UNP got the most votes, they’ve lost their majority in Colombo and their presence here is on a steady decline. Note that they’ve already lost the suburbs (Kotte, Dehiwela) and, of course, the rest of the country. They’re also losing minority votes in Colombo, and in the North and East, which have their own parties.

Duminda Silva is blowing up ze blog traffic, but it’s important to remember that he’s a dinosaur. Mammals are the future, and Sri Lankan politics is on the mend. It is possible to not be a thug and succeed in politics. People like you and me just need to stay involved, donate, vote and support the few politicians that are pushing for a change. They may look like rodents now, but trust me, the species will evolve.

The UNP has lost everything except Colombo. I volunteered for the UPFA candidate Milinda Moragoda, and this sucks. I think he had a better plan. We tried and failed.

Sri Lanka’s Local election results are out now, you can follow them at slelections.gov.lk. What’s fun is the latest results are blinking, so you have to try to click them before they disappear. It’s like playing whack-a-mole.

Voting is difficult, for me at least. First thing is, you have to be registered. In the last Presidential election we were between houses (paperwork wise) and I couldn’t vote. That sucked. If you’re not registered now it’s too late. Then you need an ID. Then you have to figure out the actual ballot.

Despite pretty vigorous rigging efforts by the government, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won most of the seats in the north. The final count was UPFA (govt) – 45, TNA 18, TULF (another Tamil party) 2. The government won the overall vote count based on elections in the south, but all the attention was on the north. Despite bribery and dubiousness, people still voted for the TNA.

This is an update from today’s voting in the north. There are reports of polling cards being taken (essentially at gun point) in high numbers. Journalist Dinidu De Alwis spoke to some of these people and the issue seems definitely credible. In the past elections have been pulled back for far less and, if memory serves, recent polling around Kandy was annulled because of election violations. Anyways, here’s a paraphrase of what I heard over the phone, from the ground.

This is a report from Dinidu de Alwis, covering the elections in the north. It’s basically what I wrote down as he talked over the phone: “We were in Kilinochchi yesterday. MP from TNA was meeting with cops, let cops speak first, Sridaran brought in four witnesses (candidates), one of them said he was offered a bribe, tried to call the cops 21 times, each time the cop who answered was a Sinhala-speaking police officer, couldn’t take down his complaint.”

The north of Sri Lanka is having local elections this Saturday. The elections have already seen a candidate’s dog being killed and basically all the opposition parties complaining about intimidation and political use of state funds. So, basically another election.