It would be fair to say that the vast majority of the people aspire for a life with peace, dignity, security, democratic freedom and prosperity. They aspire for an open, honest, efficient system of governance which is accountable to them. They wish for a political culture which nurtures unity and solidarity among the various nations, nationalities and communities. They dream of a world free of all forms of domination, exploitation, oppression and WAR! Finally, we could say that the people aspire to stand proud and tall, second to none, in the community of nations. Would this presidential contest fulfill these democratic aspirations of the people?
Historically, every successive government has failed to fulfill these aspirations of the people. Each successive government has intensified division and violent conflict through supremacist politics. . They have multiplied corruption and abuse. They have made the country ever more pitifully dependent on international finance capital and world imperialism. They have intensified poverty, indebtedness, misery and degradation of the vast majority of toiling people. This process has occurred alongside an increasing tendency towards concentrating state power in the hands of a ruling oligarchy. This has been the historical trajectory of the governments led by the UNP and the SLFP, and their various coalitions. The end result has been a society at war with itself, decomposing through rapid moral decay; a political  order ruled by terror and deception, raining horror and suffering on the masses of people. So, what can we expect at the end of this presidential election?
The Sinhala people have been thrown into a pit of confusion and despair. They were told that the end of the war would bring peace, stability, security, democratic freedom and prosperity. Yet, these aspirations have not been fulfilled. They were told to bear any sacrifice to defend the motherland; to defend the Land of the Buddha; to defend the unassailable unity, integrity and supremacy of the Sinhala Buddhist nation. The bitter truth is that the vast majority of the Sinhala people have been thrown into a desperate crisis of economic survival. The Sinhala-Buddhist nation has been polarized and splintered  as never before. The Land of the Buddha has been militarily contracted to the United States through the “Acquisition and Cross-Serving Agreement” which gives it free access to all our military facilities on land, sea and air. India has gained a powerful political, economic and strategic foothold in the country. Vast billions are being robbed through various contracts and commissions by the ‘saviors of the motherland’, while the people are being ground to the dust. Robed monks fan the flames of racial-religious division and war just to carve out their share of hegemonic-fundamentalist space in the power structure. This is the true essence of the politics of the ‘patriotic holy war’  to liquidate the Tamil nation and its struggle for national liberation, in order to defend the Race, Land, Language and Religion. Now, the guns, batons, tear gas and riot squads of the Sinhala-Buddhist state have been turned against predominantly Sinhala workers, students and graduates, who have taken the streets to demand their rights. It should be remembered that it is this very same Capitalist State that massacred over hundred thousand Sinhala youth in the South to drown two insurrections  in rivers of blood.
The Tamil people have also been plunged into a pit of division, confusion and despair. They have yet to be honored with a political solution that recognizes their political status as nation. Hundreds of thousand Tamil people remain in concentration camps and thousands in prison and detention camps. Their claim to a historical homeland and nationhood is being physically dismantled by Sinhala colonization, military encirclement and by lucrative mega agro-industrial, energy and infrastructure projects. This policy shall inevitably and irrevocably refuel the aspiration for separation.
The JVP has decided to share common ground with the UNP and endorse retired General Sarath Fonseka to bring down the Mahinda Chintanaya regime. This must be the bottom pit of opportunism. It is the JVP that was the main force in formulating the Mahinda Chintanaya and for bringing Mahinda Rajapakse to power. It was the UNP that ruthlessly decimated the JVP in the second aborted insurrection. Now the JVP has joined the camp of the ‘traitors and conspirators’ to save their mangy skin, and so has the UNP wriggled itself into common ground with its arch enemy. General Sarath Fonseka is a confirmed, born again racist, an unbridled chauvinist and a hard-line militarist, equal to his one-time boss, Mahinda Rajapakse. Â General Fonseka is bound to teach Ranil Wickremasinghe and Somawansa Amarasinghe a classic lesson in deception and how to execute ‘ open-market/ liberal pluralist democracy’ in good old open military fashion- ala Myanmar.
Whatever the outcome of the presidential election, the aspirations of the people will be betrayed by a corrupt and defunct neo-colonial Capitalist state and system, and its bloody ruling class. Whoever wins, the system will be plunged into even more instability and crisis. The prevailing imperialist global political order, of which the Sri Lankan state functions as a dependent  Comprador agent,  can only rain destruction  and devastation on the people in the insatiable search for domination, plunder and profit. This truth is proven by the fountain of blood, sweat and tears, the endless poverty, misery and degradation, of the vast billions of people of the world, perpetually defiled and enslaved under this Capitalist –Imperialist system. The global system of Imperialism and neo-colonialism can only compound and intensify the contradictions that propel the world towards ever more devastating crisis, perpetual state of war and catastrophic human suffering.  Neither this comical presidential election, nor any other such bourgeois election can fulfill the democratic aspirations of the people. The only way out for the people is to rely on their own conscious strength in organizing and mobilizing their  independent political power to resist and overcome the deadly game of deception, and the system,  once and for all, and so charter their future and conquer their freedom.