Ajit Randeniya

Contrary to the lies and boasts of the gang of thieves behind, the January 8 event was far from a democratic victory they secured at the ballot box, ‘fair and square’; A Sirisena victory never seemed likely during the period leading up to January 8, and Sirisena or Ranil Wickremesinghe themselves never seemed confident of a victory.

But hey presto, the results proved otherwise!

Looking back calmly at the January 8 events and the preceding events show that the surprise of the unlikely win” possibly drowned rational analysis of the conditions that led to the fraudulent victory. The serendipitous analyses” by hacks such as the geriatric, arrack-guzzling columnist at the Sunday Leader that attributed the unlikely result to the unusually high” turnout of ethnic and religious minority voters conformed to the deceitful propaganda by agents of the international mafia, carried out for as little as a bottle of Gal Arrack”.

The master stroke of the plot was obviously the American and British war mongers’ deployment of a Flanking manoeuver” to attack President Rajapakse from the side by using a treacherous Maithripala Sirisena: they base their approach to regime change operations on local political, economic and cultural conditions and knew Ranil Wickremasinghe had as much chance of winning a contest against Mahinda Rajapakse as a snowball’s success in hell.

They were fully aware that the vast majority of the general public would continue to flock around President Rajapakse.

So they suggested the only possible way by assembling all political malcontents in the country including the ambitious no-hoper Champika Ranawaka, the separatist TNA and the ungrateful Muslim rabble. Still the numbers do not add up.

There are clear indications that the unusually high” minority voter numbers and turn out in the North and the East and outer Colombo were created” by the so-called election monitoring NGOs, who actively campaigned for Sirisena, by rigging the 2014 electoral list to register under age youth and overseas citizens.

The so-called election monitoring” NGOs started the process under the guise of voter education” following the dismal UNP defeat at the 2011 local government elections; They blamed lack of voter education for the high” number of rejected (informal) votes in northern districts. The man named Rohana Hettiarachchi, Executive Director of one of the foreign-affiliated NGOs – People’s Action For Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) – lamented The high number of rejected votes in the northern districts was… due to the [lack of] voter education” Ranjith Keerthi Tennakoon, from the other shady” election monitoring group, Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE), also blamed the lack of proper” voter education in the North for the ‘disturbingly’ high amount of rejected votes.

The proportion of votes rejected however, accounting for only 7.91% in Jaffna, 10.8% in Killinochchi and 9.85% in the Mullaitivu district, were not unusually high” by international standards: as an example Australia, one of the earliest countries in the world to introduce universal suffrage (in 1901), still records an informal vote of around 5-7% per cent regularly at State and federal elections.

The around 10% informal vote in the North and East in 2011, so soon after the defeat of the LTTE, was a clear protest vote” by the northern Tamil voters under compulsion from the remnants of the LTTE. Knowing the strength of the Sinhala Buddhist majority behind Mahinda Rajapakse, the SLFP and UPFP, the NGOs were clearly seeking to engineer” the voter behaviour of the minorities in order to accentuate their relevance at future elections.

Edirisinghe outlined plans to conduct small-group discussions about the procedure on how they should vote” in Kilinochchi and Jaffna, ahead of future elections. The training to be provided extended to their role in the local governments, and even to monitoring of the elected councils after the election, he said. He further emphasised the need to extend the process to conduct awareness programmes” for the newly elected council members – most of whom, he said, did not have the necessary experience and knowledge about the functioning of the councils. Edirisinghe simply did not appear to know where to stop!

Without giving heed to such inconvenient comparisons, the shady NGOs PAFFREL and CaFFE, together with their incestuous sister organisation, The National Peace Council (NPC), embarked on their education” campaign, well in advance of the 2015 presidential election.

The fraudulent operation appeared to receive the full sanction of the Election Commission, with the Assistant Commissioner A.K.S. Karunanidhi himself affirming that most of the voters” were confused and not well educated about the preferential voting system.

The demigod Elections  Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya (affectionately known by all and sundry in the NGO circles and other foreign slave-groups as Macco”) appeared to have fully authorised the operation. It is clear that the top brass of the Elections Commission – Macco and his two deputies from the relevant minority groups – allowed the corruption to take place by virtually handing over the voter registration process to the NGOS.

The aborted USAID operation of July 2014,  to grant an award” for $579,000 for an Election Support through Voter Education (ESVE) program” to conduct targeted voter education in advance of the Presidential and Parliamentary elections” was expected to provide the financial underpinning of the conspiracy. However, USAID was forced to cancel funding following the Sri Lankan Government objections and promises” to investigate NGOs receiving grants to implement the project.

The stoppage of USAID official” funding however, did not seem to have put a stop to their clandestine funding of the operation. The NGOs went about merrily educating” the Northern, Eastern and Muslim voters about how to register” in the 2014 electoral list, with encouragement on the under-aged youth and foreign” citizens to register so as to accentuate their voter power. They were able to undermine the will of the majority in the Sri Lankan democracy through this foreign-inspired corrupt operation.

Now it appears, according to an announcement by the retired Elections Commissioner (the NGOs’ beloved Macco), that the next general election is also to be held using the corrupt 2014 electoral roll, despite the completion of a 2015 voter register but yet to be announced through an official communiqué. Quite an unconvincing curious justification for the use of the 2014 register!

The issue also brings to question the legitimacy of the reign of the lovable Macco himself: astonishingly, he made the announcement from the Pensions Department offices that despite his official retirement from the job and the public service, he would continue to function as Elections Commissioner under the new powers granted under S19 amendments, and will be overseeing the August general elections.

Deshapriya appeared to be so sure of the legitimacy of his position, he casually announced that he will spend around Rs. 4 billion for the upcoming general election, and in keeping with the new anti-Lankan policy, urged the candidates and parties not to use the national flag for election purposes – He surely will not have trouble spending money, considering the army of casual employees, many his personal friends from university days, he employed to ‘police’ the last elections.

The country is expected to take Mahinda Deshapriya’s word on the legitimacy of his holding the all-important position after formal retirement, and no confirmation has been forthcoming from the relevant arms of government or the Public Service Commission. This state of affairs should concern the SLFP and the Rajapakse group greatly.

The overdue dissolution of parliament and the impending new election need to be seen as the opportunity the Sri Lankan people awaiting to take back the country from the foreign and local collective of thieves who stole it on January 8.

Though the dissolution was the desperate attempt by a hapless Maithripala Sirisena – who reminds of the proverbial cat trying to cover the unmentionable on a rock surface – to save his co-conspirator Ranil Wickremesinghe from the adverse findings of the COPE report on the Central Bank bond corruption case, it was about time that he did the deed.

The lack of a popular base to the January 8 conspiracy within the majority parliamentary political party, the SLFP, and among the general public outside the parliament made the continuation of the fraud untenable.

But the UNP boasts of victory – including the precise number of electorates they would win -at the August elections should alert the SLFP to scrutinise the 2014 electoral list prior to the elections or at the polling booth to verify the age and identity of voters who cast their vote. It is apparent that the weakness of scrutineering” was a key factor in the illegitimate 2014 January presidential elections result and the same should not be allowed to take place at the parliamentary elections.

In the meantime, the legitimacy of the Election Commissioner’s self-appointment to the job after formal retirement needs to be carefully examined.