Looking at the elections from the Tamils’ view, a new
governance and rule would be unpredictable. The better thing to have now is to
continue with the same person and the same governance that is practicing now. War
has had its effects on everyone; millionaires and beggars were affected in
different ways. The losses and profits were not equal but the war definitely
had positive and negative impacts on almost each individual in this country.
For the Tamils however, the post conflict happenings were
not predictable; not in all cases. There have been sorrows and fallbacks in the
post conflict situation but there have also been other issues that were
beneficial.
The North and East parts of the country were amongst the areas
which received heavy infrastructural developments. Especially the road
constructions have been an all times high in the regime of Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Businesses, education, land values and all other socioeconomic factors would
dramatically improve when there are better roads. And that’s what exactly
happening in the once remote areas of the country.
Some of the development projects are half way through. The one
who began all of these is Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is better that he
continues in term so that at the least of things, the Tamils would continue to
receive the developments as well as the other parts of the country. The president
cannot concentrate only on the Tamils; as a matter of fact, the majority of the
population is the Sinhalese people and it is natural to look after them more
than the Tamils.
Just debating and showing up the resistance isn’t sometimes
good enough to survive, develop and to improve. There is one group of
politicians that the Tamils have to learn a lesson from. This one group of
politicians will always be with the ruling party; not matter who that is. They are
like parasites and they drop off from the dead power and attach to the next
living power just to make sure that they survive.
I am not telling that the Tamils should become parasites but
when you are infected with parasites (both Tamils and Sinhalese people) you
need to have counter measures. It is as simple as that; that you let the
parasites thrive and you die sooner or later.
The Tamil people showed up their unity in the last
provincial elections to make it clear to the world that the Tamils are of one
ethnic group and are in one group. That was a good move. That was one of the
historical moves; if someone ever wrote a book on the history of Sri Lankan
Tamils, then this act could be a unique chapter.
Yet again the Tamils are in a higher level of decision
making crisis. It is not that hard to think and act. All what you need is to
look at the past 10 years. It is sufficient to look at the past 10 years but
you can have a look all the way back to 100 years.
The Sri Lankan Tamil population which was once 35 percent is
now only 11 percent. It is already late but not too late for the Tamils to be
together and make decisions together. Whenever a Sinhalese Presidency was too
much troublesome for the Tamils, they leaned towards bringing up someone else;
the other party. Tamils are not the deciding factor nor have they been in the
past. This time, the story is different.
The other party has promised peace and what it did is
economically weakened the Tamils; made invisible walls and boundaries to the
growth of Tamils that not everyone could understand. An averagely knowledgeable
person would find it difficult to understand how you can destroy someone
through peace. Just check out the past whenever there was a peace move in the
middle of the war; it has always been something going on behind the curtain
that would affect years later, like a virus sitting in your body silently only
to wake in a time that you are already weak.
To the wish or opposition of the Tamils, there was war, and
there was an end, and what we have now is a post conflict condition. Honestly,
a post conflict situation would behave on itself. No matter what Mr. Mahinda
Rajapaksa does to heal the wounds, it will take its time. Usually it
needs a generation gap where the generation which experienced the sorrows has
to pass over. That would be somewhere from 30 to 60 years. It does not mean
that Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa is not doing enough, it means even the best
rulers that have walked the earth before couldn’t fix a post conflict wound; it
is only time that will heal.
If you cannot bring back the dead, then think about the
living. What can the Tamils do about their loved ones who died in the war? I am
sorry to say but I think they can mourn; that’s all what they can do. I know
people would hate me for writing like this but I am being logical here.
What is more important for the Sri Lankan Tamils now is the
growing younger generation. What do they need to have when they grow up into
responsible men and women in the society? They need to have the knowledge,
education and skills. To brining them that, I would say it is wise to
appreciate the developments and improvements and to support the person who
brings all those to the country.
Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa has done more developments to
the country than any other president in the past. Although he did not spend his
pocket money to do so, he still took the decision to spend on development. One of
the obvious reasons is the absence of war and therefore the absence of the
budget for war. The budget for military still stays high, so what? Look at any
other country that wants to stay vigilant; they have budgets on military in
some unbelievable scales. The USA’s annual budget for NSA alone is several
billions. And the NSA is not a war machine; it is just a watch tower.
Having said these, I haven’t lost any immediate family
members in the war, but I have lost a few friends and relatives. Honestly, I am
not among the people that were badly affected. It is not just the Tamils that
lost lives. The SLAF and LTTE being enemies to each other, what they both did
was to kill each other which was and has been the logic and justification of
war throughout the human history. And they did it well until they died.
It is the living family and friends that suffer wounds. The disabled
people from all ethnic groups are still carrying the wounds. It is
understandable that most of the people would be angry against their enemies. Well,
the war is over now.
If the Tamils want to find themselves in a better position
than slavery after 30 years from now, they have to build the foundations now. Just
imagine what the Tamil people and their leaders did 30 years back from now. It
is like an elephant in the room; had they have prepared for the 30 years into
the future, we would have been in a better situation. Most of us are not going
to be there after 30 years. When the next generation is there, what are they
going to have? Whatever we decide now is important.
So how is this related to the presidential elections 2014? Mr.
Mahinda Rajapaksa has been taking the country in the direction of
development. No Tamil can say that they did not benefit from it. There are
major projects still ongoing. If the Tamils vote for Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa
in the coming elections then it will enable him to rule for another term. I believe
that when he sees the full support of Tamils, he will also be satisfied with
whatever developmental projects that he has given to Sri Lankan Tamils. There is
a saying “a happy worker is a productive worker”. The president of a country in
essence is the first worker for the people. You keep the first citizen happy
and it yields. It is more important to the Sri Lankan Tamils that live in Sri
Lanka than anyone in the world, than the Sinhalese people and it is more
important than any time in the past, that all Sri Lankan Tamils get together
and vote for Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa.
I as a 31 year old Sri Lankan Tamil, have never voted for
anyone in any election ever in my lifetime; not even once, because I thought it
was politics and I didn’t like it. It does not mean that I don’t understand the
importance but I really could not be convinced that I had to vote for someone. This
time, for the first time in my life, I have decided to vote for Mr. Mahinda
Rajapaksa. The decision is not for me, but for the people who are going
to live here after I am long gone.
For those of who cannot stop hating the government, some
officials in the government or some legislations and constitutions, here is
what I say. If you have to choose from a number of things, then you have to
choose the appropriate one. If all what you have is swans, then you can choose
the most beautiful swan. If all what you have is hyenas, then choose the least
ugly one.
If you have a mixture of things, then go for the appropriate
one. I don’t like the idea of having an intimately passionate rabbit as my
guardian where I have to walk through a field of wild animals. I would choose a
tiger to be at my guard even though I know that I have to be careful not to
provoke it because I know it could attack me. It does not need to guard me on
the way, if it is with me the other beasts are not going to come closer to me. On
the contrary, the rabbit will only attract its enemies towards me.
I would keep a dog that stands with me for my assistance on
my path than choosing a faithful dinosaur that is not here with me!
Anyone can speak, debate and put in their opinions but who
were there when bullets flew by? Who were there when there was no food to eat? Who
were there when father’s blood was shed on the son’s face? Who were there with
you to wipe your tears?
Being in a hotel room in a highly developed country and
talking out loud for you in the dirt here in the haunted terrains of Sri Lanka
is good, but not good enough to bring back all what you have lost. By all
means, listen to your family, relatives, well wishers and researchers all over
the world. Remember something too; when things go wrong you are the ones that
face the trouble.
I have heard about accidents but I did really realize once
when I got caught in one where the bus rolled twice and killed five people on
the spot. If someone who wants to talk how to get to normal after an accident,
then I will look if that person has ever met with an accident. If the person hasn’t
met with an accident, I will still listen to the person; there might be
knowledge that I don’t have. But if it goes too much and controls my decision
where I have been in an accident, my response will be giving a finger to that
person.
On the political view, not only the Tamils but also
Sinhalese people can understand that the employments and salaries for
government staff have been an all time high in this presidents rule. For those
who want to point out fallbacks in the reign of Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, I
would like to ask “are you sure that there will be none if the other one comes
to rule?”
Yes there are issues with the international relationships
though. I am not qualified enough to discuss a few things so I am not going to
discuss. Can you make a change overnight if you threw away Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa
from governance? Nope; I don’t think so.
Being brave is good but being savvy is better. I would not
go to fight with a cobra because it is small and I am stronger and brave than
it. I would better leave it alone and be happy about my decision; though I have
caught snakes with my bare hands at times in my real life, I would not choose
to be a fool and brave man. I would rather choose to be an appropriate person
with better decision making. Even a mosquito makes me annoyed when I cannot
catch it. I cannot be vengeance about it and kill it with an axe.
People we are in the 21st century and the world have
already gone a big leap away from us. The technology is growing double the
speed it was in the past century. It is like an elastic band that the developed
countries are in the front end and the developing countries in the middle and
the undeveloped countries at the back end. There will be a time when the band
breaks up. We as a nation better be with the part going in front and not back.
The world was going forward and we had places where people
used bicycle dynamos to power FM radios to listen to the news for around twenty
years. There are still places where the people haven’t had the experience of
switching on an electric bulb; and I am not joking. It happened and I have been
there; trust me.
The leadership plays an important role in the rise and fall
of any community. The condition of some of the Tamil people was like in the
stone ages. Literally, there was no means of transport, they walked; there was
no means of communications other than snail mail and that would take days if
not weeks to travel across just a few hundred kilometers; I studied that
Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless transmission yet I first touched a landline
phone when I was 14 years old and first touched a cell phone when I was 22
years old. But the technologies were there just 50 km away from me and should
have been in reach in two hours yet departed by two decades!
Man I was sitting in front of a computer in an internet cafe
in Jaffna for 15 minutes trying to figure out how the computer could be switched
on, and I was 19 years old. I am sure that there were patriotic protestors in
the streets of London protesting against the government of Sri Lanka in favor
of the Sri Lankan Tamils, in favor of me; and their kids at my age were
following computer science and software architecture in some of the renown
institutes in the US, UK and all over Europe.
What the fact?!
I think for myself and decide that I have to develop myself to
be able to take care of myself. If I cannot take care of myself, then I will
not be able to take care of my family. If don’t care about my family and be an
astray and say I am fighting for my community, then it is a lie.
I choose to develop myself in order to eventually take care
of my family, community, country and the world. And I see possibility of
development in Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s rule. What the other party would
do is uncertain to me.
I am voting for Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Marynathan
Qunson
Vidathalthivu
Mannar
Sri Lanka
