President Mahinda’s win: a story of mixture of displaying gratefulness by rural Sinhala masses and ungratefulness by opportunists.

By judging the presidential Election results it is very much clear that it is the Sinhalese Buddhist rural masses that have put their weight a lot behind President Mahinda Rajapaksha (MR) while Sarath Foneska (SF) has gained significant majority in the areas dominated by Tamils and Muslims. Muslim dominated areas such as Potuvil,  Digamadulla, Samanthuraya, Kalmunai and Muttur etc have given a significant margin of total votes to SF over MR. So has been the case in the districts of Jaffna, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Killinochchi, Vavniya and Mannar,  Tamil dominated areas.   

Apart from the fact that MR did a great service to the Eastern areas by freeing the area from the clutches of terrorism, there have been a significant number development projects benefitting the masses. Those project include construction of a more than 100 KMs long road and bridges connecting Trincomalee and Pulmudai, the 100% of the beneficiaries of the project are Muslims and Tamils and the longest bridge in SL, the Kinniya bridge, again 100% of the beneficiaries of the project are Muslims and Tamils: more benefitting the former in the both the cases. Many other projects undertaken in the district benefit the two communities. This has been the case with Baticaloa and Ampara districts too with innumerable number of development projects being underway. Almost all the villages in the province have been provided with electricity with many paved roads. All signs of ushering a great economic revival and other benefits to the both communities in the province are quite visible. All these achievements have been made within a short span of two years while a full scale war had been raging in the north.  However, MR has not been lucky enough to enjoy the gratefulness from these communities. Though MR has done great services to the Muslim IDPs in Puttalm by giving them a chance to resettle in Jaffna and has made all measures to resettle them soon, the latter has, however, preferred SF.

Sarath Fonseka has also fared fairly well in some areas of the Colombo District too, again a district that constitutes significant portion of Muslims and Tamils.  In most of the polling divisions in the North Western Province, North Central and Southern Province there has been a significant majority behind MR.  These districts comprise of most of the rural Sinhala masses who have shown a remarkable display of gratefulness to MR for the great services done by him winning the secessionist war. It should also be noted that a great bulk of the members of the armed forces come from these provinces.  

So it is a story of mixture of displaying gratefulness by majority of rural Sinhala masses and ungratefulness by opportunists. This is undoubtedly a victory of defeating secessionist and foreign forces who were hell bent of ensuring president Mahinda Rajapaksha's defeat.