The Right NOT to Vote
Approximately one year ago on May 18th 2009, I wrote an article on Sri Lanka’s second “independence”, the spirit I fostered at the time is not reflected in this article one year later. On April 8th 2010, Sri Lankans went to the polls to vote. Yet I did not vote. Many others did not as well. It is clear cut that Sri Lanka’s population did not feel that their vote counted, and rightly-so. Yet, was it wise NOT to vote? Perhaps if one thinks of it as legitimizing an increasingly theocratic government by participating in the hopelessly flawed façade of democracy, then it makes sense not to be a party to it. Post-conflict human societies are usually vacuums for militant or ambitious leaders to fill. Now this can either be through questionable installations of “democracy” e.g.- the Hamid Karzai establishment or it could be military dictatorship much like Idi Amin’s. In a society that has just emerged from a murderous…
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