Knitting at a house party, by me

Banglore Mirror front page, by me

Above, for example, is blaring news of ‘All night scotch and biriyani at Indiranagar police station’. Which, honestly, sounds great. I don’t think the police participate or encourage such things.

I’ve met a lot of people that complain about this state of affairs but one, basically a party promoter incidentally, who said it was good. Or that he could see the good in it. Basically people have a compressed evening and go home in time for work. Most expat workers seem to start on foreign time, about 11 and get off late, so it’s not necessarily great for them.

This city, however, is conservative, all the modern shops and amenities aside. It’s bright lights big city during the day, but at night everyone’s home in bed. This is honestly not necessarily a bad thing. I guess it just is.

Fonseka press conference, by me

I guess there are two points, one is whether the charges make sense and two, whether the law is applied equally.

To me, it simply doesn’t make sense that a military men would give up the uniform and personal security, file election papers, campaign, and then decide to stage a coup. He had already given up any powers that would have made a coup even possible.

Furthermore, there seems little possibility of a coup during the election, as Fonseka was holed up at the Cinnamon Lakeside. A coup, generally, involves occupying key buildings. Mahinda had already occupied them with troops.

In this case I think the law is being applied as a weapon. People with connections can get away with murder and those without can get framed for anything. It’s a sad day for General Fonseka personally, but it’s sad day for us as well. Fonseka is no saint, but this is not even an issue of law. It’s the law being corrupted to serve a man. Sarath Fonseka’s real crime was opposing Mahinda. For that he’s in jail.

Guy checking tickets on the train, by me

This was pretty much the first guy I met. We were on the train and hadn’t discovered our commonality till the very end. He was really nice. I told him how things had changed and he told me how they had been. He said him and his friends used to ride motorbikes across the whole country. They’re now scattered across the globe. As annoying as the vengeful Tamil diaspora is, calling for boycotts and funding terror, I think people like Felix are the reality.

Good people, forced to leave their home because of a terrible injustice. They’ve moved on, usually well, and they’re not asking for anything. I personally think they deserve a decent apology and reparations, but when I mentioned this Felix just laughed. He’s got his wife and kids in India now, the son has got married, life goes on.

Strangely, the next guy I met in India was also of Sri Lankan descent, also estate Tamil, his mother from Bandarawela. I didn’t get into it too much, but I suspect they because the estate Tamils were disenfranchised and basically booted after the British left. He was my friend’s driver and he had no particular affinity for Sri Lanka and laughed when I suggest that he visit.

It’s a random sample, but there’s a lot of Sri Lankan/Tamil diaspora in India. There’s actually still a lot of IDPs living in camps here as well. It was once terrible reality, but it’s now a sort of historical sediment. If you look deep into anyone’s history there will be injustices, rapes, massacres, forced migration. It gets buried under new lives and new memories, new places that don’t remind us of the old.

Felix had only a passing knowledge of the ’situation’ in Sri Lanka and he asked me for news. It obviously wasn’t a pressing issue. He’s moved and moved on, seemingly with malice to none. I said very nice to meet you and told him to look me up if he was ever on the island. We got off at Bangalore Central and I turned to orient myself. There were military chaps carrying bags, another train, a pretty girl taking the stairs underground. Another shuffle and he was gone.

Old friends, new metro, by random guy at tacky furniture shop

Bangalore is a happening city. People are doing serious business here, and they party as much as possible before everything closes at 11h30. I went to some pretty good schools and while I never expected to run into classmates on the subcontinent, it makes sense. There is serious money here, and the place has attracted a lot of talent from all over the world.

I’ve been hanging out mostly with expats and like one or two locals. They work their asses off during the week and then bounce around town on the weekends. Mostly to hotels and higher end restaurants, partly out of fear for their stomachs. I have no such compunctions (or diet) so I’m going to go walking around today.

That said, though I can’t afford it for long, there is a full first world here. I’m staying in Indiranagar, the old Defence Colony, and there are big shops for Benneton and posh furniture. The roads are big, routinely four lanes and we went zipping around on a scooter. I could check Google Maps on Guillaume’s iPhone and it instantly gave directions to Samarakand (this Afghani/Mughal restaurant), tracking our current position via GPS.

There they served delicious hunks of chicken and baby lamb, making me too comatose to do anything else. And then we zipped back. He was watching one of the 1000 channels of digital TV and I fell asleep. It’s nice to be back in this world for a minute, but I’ve also got to get back on the train. I’m thinking Mysore next, or maybe Hyderabad. Before I leave I need to check out this giant bull covered in oil (devotional) and try some of this recommended brain fry (consumable).

Fish eating my feet, by me

One of many food vendors on the train, by me

The inevitable decline, by me

The toilets, alas, marked ‘Indian Style’ are basically a squat onto the ground. As such, I suppose, clean, being as one is instantly meters away from an offence. But still a bit beyond my ken. It is classic input/output error. A gross miscalculation.

Chennai trishaw, by me

Carriage, take me away with you! Ship, steal me away from here!
Take me far, far away. Here the mud is made of our tears! (Baudelaire, refrence in De Botton)

To view the website of Indian Rail is to glimpse a panopoly of opportunity, more myriad than their Gods. It, the abstract system, is perhaps more a ‘machine of motion’ than the train itself. Baudelaire used to like to watch ships, saying they made him think of ‘a vast, immense, complicated but agile creature, an animal full of spirit, suffering and heaving all the sighs and ambitions of humanity.’

In the same way, the system of Indian Rail is a sublime peeking into the veins of Mother India. India Rail carries literally millions of passengers everyday. They range from the poor to the now entirely first world middle class. Yet there is no chaos at the terminal, nor even tickets really. Me, I simply booked the train online. I paid online, through a panopoly of bank options, and was wait listed. Then, in a great bureaucratic shuffle, people booked and unbooked, slowly bumping me up the list. By the time I checked in a Chennai Internet Cafe I was booked and seated. When I arrived my name was printed on the door. The train left on time and an admirably moustachioed man came and burlily checked off my particulars. The system works, it works with failure and cancellation, and it works with the vast diversity that is India.

And that’s just the seat. Beyond that there is constantly food and drink coming in and out of the carriage. So far I have eaten vegetable buriyani, dhose, and vade. Sadly, the only innelegant mechanism seems to be the toilets, a hole which gutters onto the track below. Take me far, far away. Here the mud is made from our rears.

Compartment C, Car 293 (1938), by Edward Hoper

The Loneliness Of Travel

Perhaps not the best segue, but I’m going by the book. Edward Hopper is an American painter who documented transient places, beautifully. His works portray beautiful, lonely scenes, a woman in a diner, a man at a gas station. All with that 1950s class and restraint, belying great tension underneath. What most of his places seems to imply is thought, introspection, a place apart from the norm where one is civilized yet alone. These are not homes and there is no content in the context. It is simply a woman in a hotel room, or inside a train. These are no more her places than they are anyone elses, so all personality is internal and implied. This effect is largely of sadness, but also come. And so the loneliness of travel.

Now, for example, I am alone. I am typing this on the Bangalore Express, as the sun has set and the steward ushered us away from the open door. There, in the shuffle, I chatted to a Tamil gentleman from Hamilton, Ontario and smiled at a father and her child. Inside the cabin, however, we are alone again. The light has gone down on the dirty windows and I can’t see anything but my own reflection, I hear my headphones and feel the rumble of the train.

There is a flux here, in these places. You see girls you have no introduction to, hear snatches of conversation and pass through a hundred lives. It is strangely chilling to walk through the Chennai station and imagine that it is Mumbai. That men could open fire at such a nexus, one feels the possible carnage keenly, it seems a familiar scene. The place is crowded as a church, and strangely hallowed. After the Mumbai attacks, also fragile, that tension drawing it to the sublime.

Here one is alone, yet here alone one can think. There is time for one thing, but there is also a lifting of the usual routine that binds our thoughts and regulates our inhibitions. Much of the day is prescribed and many of our thoughts are put there or guided by other people. Transit, however, is simply college ruled paper, blank and nondescript. You eat, sleep and occupy space according to some norms, but there is no personalization. Your affairs and accomplishments and failures are all in your head, packed discreetly in your carry on, to be unburdened only if you meet someone you know. It’s a effectively a blank slate.

If we find poetry in the service station and motel, if we are drawn to the airport or train carriage, it is perhaps because, in spite of their garish colours and harsh lighting, we implicitly feel that these isolated places offer us a material setting for an alternative to the selfish ease, the habits and confinement of the ordinary, rooted world.

By tossing oneself in the transport shuffle one hopes that one also enters the cosmic shuffle, a place pregnant with the possibility of something different, better and new. That is one hopes for a change. Something better, something different, something new. Personally, I think it’s a destination that doesn’t exist at all. You may never get there, but while you’re going it all seems possible.

This is part of a series (I guess), commenting on Alain De Botton’s ‘The Art Of Travel‘ as I travel around India. Here’s part one, On Departure

That said, I got lost and found this Samsung Solar Guru phone which I’ve been looking for since it came out. It is solar powered, not fully, but I think enough for a few calls on vacay. It’s the correct price, and I think it’s real, so I got one. Plus those guys walked me to this Internet Cafe. What they seem to call an Internet Provisioning Center. Some backpackers are sitting next to me speaking some language I don’t understand. Polish?

This is only a cursory impression, but is damn big and cludgy, but I suspect it works. The Indian Rail website for example, is not the prettiest 2.0 machine around, but it has sorted me out. I registered there, checked available trains, chose one, booked it and then – chagrin – I was waitlisted, so I was like WTF. I read about this on India Mike and apparently they overbook. So I took it anyway, paid with my credit card through Axis Bank and I’m walking around with a printout.

Luckily I can check the waitlist status online, which I’m doing here, above this dusty, hot street where few people understand what I even mean by Internet. And I’ve got a seat, which means I’m getting the effa out of Chennai.

A photo of a cutout of a real plane, by me

Indeed, travel is often uncomfortable. De Botton mentions this gap between narrative (or brochure) and reality, how hours of jostling on a train and worrying about a million mundane things gets condensed into ‘he travelled to London’. Then how even the most picturesque Barbados beach can be spoiled by a fight over who gets the bigger creme brule, human mood that is.

It’s interesting because he’s exploring travel as a perceptual device, and he’s exploring it from the viewpoint of a deeply mediated primate. That is, De Botton experiences travel from the brochure on out, rather than as a sort of fact of life. So to, do I, to a degree. Thumbing through a guidebook and wondering why the bus takes so long and what I ate. For this particular generation of ‘city kids’, we often come from the media back to the reality and wonder why the two don’t fit.

Artificial To Natural

I think one of the more interesting ways to divide things is into Artificial and Natural. As in, at one point we were cast out of an Eden of God’s curation and we are now curating our own Eden, made from technology and economy and ultimately cumulating in Artificial Intelligence and perfect information. That is, control over chaos and, ultimately, sickness, death and suffering. The God’s Eden is metaphorical, but it can also refer to our early evolution, whereby we experienced everything as subdued monkeys or rats, living in the moment intrinsically, by virtue of limited brain capacity. That is, at one point in evolution we were children and we lived by natures laws but now we’re adults and we make our own. Perhaps more accurately, teenagers.

At this point, in 2010, I have one toe in the Artificial world and I think it’s a foothold. So we expect these curated experiences, for the toilet to flush, for things to start on time, for our cells not to become cancerous and begin multiplying uncontrollably. For nothing to pierce this veil of illusion and consensual hallucination. And so, in language, the raw code of this illusion, we condense things down to Twitter level. In art we simplify experience into photographs.

If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find the same process of simplification or selection at work as in the imagination. Artistic accounts involve severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us.

A story-teller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of story-telling, wearing us with repetitions, misleading emphases and inconsequential plotlines.

On Anticipation

For the longest time I haven’t travelled because I didn’t get it. I could get a much more rarefied perception by researching or asking myself about something rather than dunking myself in the soup of experience and hoping to glean something with my teeth open, like a baleen whale. And so I haven’t. This is actually the first time I’ve actually stepped outside of the Internet and the country I’m in of my own volition. On one level it’s because I have to get the effa out of here, but on another I am extremely curious about reality, unmediated and uncurated. De Botton never gets into whether this is enlightening on not. Perhaps I’ll see. I suppose I could just stay home and read the next chapter.

Colombo airport, by me

The stuff I had to do was visit Jaffna and vote in the election (which I messed up). I got the visa a month ago and so it was just a matter of booking the flight. So I paid Rs. 12,000 (Sri Lankan Airlines) and got a round-trip to Chennai. I plan on getting out of Chennai as fast as possible to stay with a friend in Bangalore. There I can hopefully get a 3G data package and see how the Internet is. I suspect the coverage is more spotty than Sri Lanka, but it is a big place. I have been consumed by an insatiable curiosity for months now and I’m really looking forward to seeing a bit more of the world. So I’ll be in India this weekend.

Image by 5th Pillar

It seems like a symbolic gesture, but they’ve already had enough demand to print over a million notes.

Anand explained that a number of factors contribute to the success of the zero rupee notes in fighting corruption in India. First, bribery is a crime in India punishable with jail time. Corrupt officials seldom encounter resistance by ordinary people that they become scared when people have the courage to show their zero rupee notes, effectively making a strong statement condemning bribery. In addition, officials want to keep their jobs and are fearful about setting off disciplinary proceedings, not to mention risking going to jail. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization—that is, they are not alone in this fight.

This last point—people knowing that they are not alone in the fight—seems to be the biggest hurdle when it comes to transforming norms vis-à-vis corruption. For people to speak up against corruption that has become institutionalized within society, they must know that there are others who are just as fed up and frustrated with the system.

Interesting idea, and certainly less offensive than the campaign handbills that pass for money here.

With gread power comes gread responsiblity

It’s an interesting article, I recommend reading the whole thing.

The scientists argue that power is corrupting because it leads to moral hypocrisy. Although we almost always know what the right thing to do is – cheating at dice is a sin – power makes it easier to justify the wrongdoing, as we rationalize away our moral mistake. For instance, when Lammers and Galinsky asked the subjects (in both low and high-power conditions) how they would judge an individual who drove too fast when late for an appointment, or whether it was acceptable to cheat on the income tax, people with power consistently said it was worse when others committed those crimes than when they did. In other words, the powerful people believe they had a good reason for speeding – they’re important people, with important things to do – but everyone else should follow the posted signs. We become the exception to the rule, which is the law.

This has interesting applications for our little island, where the law seems to apply disproportionately to those out of power.

To quote agin:

We live in an age when our most powerful people – they tend to also have lots of money – are also the most isolated. They live in gated communities with private drivers. They eat at different restaurants and stay at different resorts. They wear different clothes and skip the security lines at airports, before sitting at the front of the plane. We shouldn’t be surprised that they’re also assholes.

Photo from a CDMA tower, but you get the point

Information Abhors A Vacuum

With the crackdown on independent media, you simply get less reliable news. Hence everything in the print and electronic media is taken with oodles of salt and MSG. Many papers and outlets resort to basically running Media Center For National Security press releases, which is basically propaganda. That said, the grapevine is fertile as ever and people know things and those stories spread. Most of it is absolute nonsense, but some of it is true. The sad thing is that it’s impossible to know. Personally, the only things I trust are what I see with my own eyes, or what a few people see with theirs.

Into this vacuum you get a situation where random ass bloggers and twitterers can provide vital if limited insights. As in, I saw troops surrounding the Elections Commission, or I am in Menik Farm and it is raining. That stuff is important as it sort of keeps the hinges on reality, though it is not really a substitute for a functioning media.

Government Demands Control

However, this is not really  priority for the government. The priority is power, and stability, and media is value as a means to an end. So, as messy, uncomfortable expression peeks out online, they’re working to suppress that too. There was a time when people thought Internet behavior was uncontrollable, but it’s not, it’s actually quite easy to repress. If that is accomplished, we’re left literally in an almost preliterate environment of gossip and rumor.

Why This Is Bad

I think that going this direction just leads to more rumor and confusion. The main reason you get random nonsense online is that the government has beaten the senses out of the mainstream media. Changing course on that issue would be impossible of course, so it looks like full steam to China.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, stability has long been the bane of the Sri Lankan state. What we have now is a wartime security and propaganda force being consolidated into the very workings of a centralized state. One wonders if they’ll ever lift Emergency now, or if this is just the state that has emerged.

Protestor at Lasantha’s funeral

So perhaps it is better to not speak out, or to speak at all. If you look at it on a personal level, no one wants their relative or friend to do be a martyr. The sum of all those caring decisions, however, is an uncaring society. Where injustices are ignored and everyone looks out for themselves. Plus it’s boring.

So, while I appreciate the concern, I’ll continue to write. If you get any concrete information as to threats then I’d appreciate it, but spooking me out of ignorance is not especially useful. Personally I try to be moderate and reasonable and I don’t have any particular malice towards anybody. I don’t think people hate me as much as when I ranted a lot, but I dunno. I guess that’s no protection, but if I wanted to live a quiet life I’d go back to Canada.

I believe in a caring society, and I think that involves speaking out when you see something, not gathering your loved ones and closing the door. Also, seeing reality bent and twisted just gives me a mental twitch I can’t really control. I am what I am and I write what I think. It saddens me that censorship has become so internalized in this culture, but it isn’t internal to me. I hope that there are a few more like me, and I hope that they speak out more. That more than anything is the way to keep each other safe, but I guess it’s a hard first step to make.

Mahinda and Sarath, bus poster near Galle

What We Lost

Mahinda does not rule by law. With the war he just got it done whatever the costs. It was tragic at the time but it got done and what do I know. In his campaign he just won at whatever expense and whatever detriment to our public institutions. And he won so, again, what do I know. I don’t think this is the right way to go about things, but in a state which has struggled to merely exist, such be the leadership we inherit.

What We Have

Mahinda simply rules.  He is the alpha male of alpha males, whether in 100 foot effigy over Horton Place or in collegial conversation with Colonel Khaddafi. To put it frankly, Mahinda is macking it hard. Dude’s got the guns, the money, the power and probably the women. He rules.

What Sri Lanka has lacked is a consistently stable government, which MR can probably provide. It is also, unfortunately, consistently bad, but that is better than chaos. It is also brutal and dictatorial but actually less than, say, Premadasa. Not that this is benchmark, but many people cite it as such.

What We Get

In that perhaps limited capacity and sense, I think Mahinda will develop the country. Or, more accurately, I think the country will develop. He’ll do it at considerably greater cost and with more inefficiency than I consider necessary, but also with more pomp and, dare I say, style. Of course, the whole thing could bubble and pop, but I don’t think so, or rather, don’t want to.

So, in short, I for one welcome our new authoritarian overlords. I do respect their authority. A) I don’t know what else to do and B) I do think everything will be all right. Well, at least mostly right. Or, then, perhaps wrong but OK results. Something like that.

Mirissa from the boat

The boat is mostly full of tourists. The hotels are mostly booked. This makes finding a place hard, try Seaview  (041 578 4020) for the view or Palm Villa (041 225 0022) for the rooms. A friend organized the whaling thing through Mirissa Water Sports (773 597 731) for Rs. 5,000 a head.

But to return to the point, I was chatting to a few tourists and they’re having a great time here. They discuss the political situation in passing, but it seems – to most – befuddling more than threatening. I was out on the water looking back at shore, thinking nothing in particular. It just didn’t make sense that this resplendent island was in fact full of bloated politicians and avarice. It just doesn’t look like that. It just looks beautiful.

Tail flipping blowhole vacating

Whale and boat

The whales hang out in waters over a thousand meters deep, the closest of which are off the southern coast, in Mirissa. To be quite honest, it’s a damn jungle out there, it’s so many. This is also a main shipping lane, so the strip is constantly populated. It’s either container ships or beasts the size of. There is some conflict. Some whales bear scars.

We saw a few Bryde’s Whales, cresting and blowing out air, finally turning tail and diving. I got one shot which was entirely sure of my Rs. 5,000 worth, but then came more and more.

Dolphins

Dolphin

Then came the dolphins. I had fallen asleep, trying to ward of the impending puke. The boat rocks quite rocky side to side. I was holding a plastic bag. Upon seeing their scurrying imminences, I was entirely distracted. They skirted close to bow, oblivious and strong, packs of muscle and curiosity.

Feeling pukey

As the boat idled people jumped in the water. I jumped in too. It was deep and infinite. Blue and cool. As I dove deeper it got cooler, as I poked my head above I could float with ease, buoyant and well at ease. There was no land in sight. We climbed to the second deck of the boat and jumped off from there.

Sperm Whales

The dolphins, of course, were distracted, only re-emerging after the rude land beasts had climbed up the ladder to our boat. By then I was tired. Went to the bow of the ship to dry out, chatted with some tourists. Then the Sperm Whales emerged, not one but many. Three abreast, two aside.

So many sea beasts, so many boats, so much wonder. My God this is a magical island. I’m lucky to be alive.

Mirissa Island, long exposure at like midnight

The Sinhalaya Travels crew actually biked down here, which I wish I could’ve made. Apparently it took 8 hours, which is quite good. Takes about 3 to drive. They also have a good blog post on Mirissa.

Voting in Vavuniya, by Amali Ramanayaka/Perambara

Voting in Menik Farm (IDP camp), by Amali Ramanayaka/Perambara

Celebration in Hikkaduwa, by Dinidu de Alwis/Perambara

An official crosses of the name of a voter in Kilinochchi, by Anupama Ganegoda/Perambara

Ballot boxes in Matara, by Dinidu de Alwis/Perambara

More photos are available from Perambara’s Flickr stream.

And then he cloned himself. Photo by me

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was re-elected to office following the just concluded Presidential elections, does not need to take oaths immediately as he is the incumbent President and will be sworn in for his second term in due course, Government Minister G. L. Pieris told reporters in Colombo a short while ago. (Daily Mirror, entire story)

However, the Constitution says:

(3) The poll for the election of the President shall be taken not less than one month and not more than two months before the expiration of the term of office of the President in office.
15[(3a) (i) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the preceding provisions of this Chapter, the President may, at any time after the expiration of four years from the commencement of his first term of office, by Proclamation, declare his intention of appealing to the People for a mandate to hold office, by election, for a further term.

and adds,

(d) The person declared elected as President at an election held under this paragraph shall, if such person –
(i) is the President in office, hold office for a term of six years commencing on such date in the year in which that election is held (being a date after such election) or in the succeeding year, as corresponds to the date on which his first term of office commenced, whichever date is earlier

The only bit of vagueness is here

(4) (Where a poll for the election of a President is taken, the term of office of the person elected as President at such election shall commence on the expiration of the term of office of the President in office

But I think the point is overall clear. The new President gets six more years, not eight. But seeing as the Constitution and law are violated every day, let’s see if he can get away with this.

From Mahinda’s now defunct Facebook page, which was hilarious

I post this mostly because friends immediately called to ask if I was in jail. So I’m not. Any rumors quoted here are clearly labeled as such and doused with salt. Plus I would somehow Twitter if I was in jail.

Ranil at the UNP office on election day

It’s damn nonsense though. The country needs an opposition not as a placeholder between elections but as an active part of the government. Holding them to task, demanding certain things, forcing them to compete for the peoples affection. That results in better governance for everybody, from any party. Most of the intelligent people in the UNP have already crossed to the government and Ranil just holds sway over the loyal rump. And he’s sitting on it. I like the guy, respect him and think he’s really smart. But he’s also failed. I’m pretty smart but when I fail at stuff I try to step down and let someone else have a go. It’s nothing personal.

Sarath tried in this election, he put everything on the line and he never stopped fighting. If anybody failed it’s Ranil, and he should step down. Six more years of Mahinda is going to be annoying, but six more years of Ranil in opposition is way too much status quo for me. I’ve been saying this for years now, but this is one big test and he failed it. Not only was he unable to run, he was unwillingly to field a UNP candidate for the first time ever and the candidate he backed lost. I dunno, perhaps he wanted him to lose. Either way, he failed. More importantly, that candidate showed how little work Ranil had really been putting into the role of opposition leader.

For the good of the UNP, the country and himself, Ranil should go.

Cinnamon Lakeside, yesterday

I say this because all the international attention is of a rather bad sort. As in, ‘will my hotel get surrounded by troops, I’d rather go to India (but not the Taj), or Thailand (but then the airport), then Florida’. I think the siege was wrong, but it was never dangerous to guests. If anything, it was entertaining. While the election is a travesty of intimidation and abuse, it was nothing like the days where the JVP threatened to kill people who voted, and did.

This is not to excuse anything. It’s a bit like saying I’m sorry I punched you in the face but at least I didn’t stab you. I mean, it’s still not kosher. I think the election was unfree and unfair, but it will stand. I think Fonseka’s complaints of abuse, intimidation and vote rigging are true and that the Constitution should be legally binding, but people don’t care. So you get 6 more years of Mahinda, or 8 if he wants to bend the law a whole lot more (and why not).

So that’s what it is. It sucks, but it’s a 21st century kinda horrid, not the carnage in the streets of before. It’s not good, but it’s not that bad. This is, I think, the modern condition.

Fonseka press conference yesterday

General Sarath Fonseka has left the Cinnamon Lakeside and been escorted home. I don’t think there’s any danger of him being assassinated, indeed, that’s the worst case scenario for everyone. Mahinda Rajapaksa has been declared the victor by his own state apparatus and I think most people accept that result. I guess I do too, but that’s more a testament to our low standards than anything else. The election campaign was illegal, but not illegal enough for us to care.

Sarath Fonseka’s complaints against the election are wide reaching and probably valid. Misuse of state resources, defamation, the unconstitutional appointments of both police and public services, and then election rigging. However illegal these things are, they are also largely accepted by the public. The issue of the appointment of police and public service people is so big and entrenched that it’s blatant and obvious unconstitutionality does not even draw attention. All these people are supposed to be appointed by a Constitutional Council, under the 17th amendment, but every leader has ignored that.

On a purely legal level it’s a simple ruling, but this is not a land of laws. In term of rule of man, no one cares. That said, there are precedents for elections being overturned on similar grounds. Most notably, Basil Rajapakse vs. his niece Nirupama Rajapakse.

Ultimately Kularatne won the poll, but was disqualified by a judge based on an election petition submitted by Nirupama Rajapakse, which held that an agent of Ananda Kularatne, Basil Rohana Rajapakse, committed the “corrupt practice of making a false statement relating to (Nirupama’s) personal character and conduct.” (Sunday Leader)

There are other other precedents as well of MP elections being tossed out, but never on the Presidential level. Do I think it will happen? No. So what now? Honestly, we go back to not caring and Mahinda Rajapaksa goes back to being President. The election wasn’t free and fair, but it wasn’t that bad. What to do.