Mahinda Rajapakse Won. Damn It.
18 November 2005, lunch time
So, Ananthan was totally right in the way he saw the election playing out. There are apparently 700,000 eligible voters in Jaffna, where my family is from. They basically all stayed home this election. This was the case all over the Tamil parts of Sri Lanka. More interesting, is that this was also apparently the case in places like Colombo; TamilNet has more on the votes cast. Anyway, as a result of the unofficial official Tamil boycott, the hardliner, Mahinda Rajapakse, won the election 2005 Sri Lankan presidential election by a paltry 180,000 votes. Reaction to the election is being recorded over at the BBC, and will probably make for some interesting reading.
Hey, do you know why turnout in Tamil areas was so low? Boycott? Intimidation? Cynicism?
by Mahi on November 18 2005, 2:48 pm #
Sounds like it was a bit of everything. They were burning tires as road blocks in parts of the country. That would probably deter those who wanted to vote. The fact that people didn’t vote in the capital, which is basically free of violence by the sounds of things, suggests that some people just weren’t interested in voting.
by ramanan on November 18 2005, 5:55 pm #