Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Are those predicting certain victory for Mythripala Sirisena the Internet Worries and Arm-Chair Pundits living in the Western Province?

There has been an ever increasing confidence among the supporters of the Common Opposition that its candidate Mythripala Sirisena would be victorious on 08th January. The majority of those who habour those thoughts are from the Western Province, the most developed province in the country, home to the commercial capital-Colombo of which population is largely metropolitan. As has been proved few occasions previously President Rajapaksha in particular and SLFP/UPFA in general enjoy less popularity among the people in the Western Province particularly in the Colombo district largely due to the less representation of Sinhalese Buddhists, the segment that represents  the largest vote bank for the SLFP/UPFA.  Therefore, president Rajapaksha's largest chunk of voter bank lies in the rural Sri Lanka.

The confidence shown by the supporters of the Common Opposition is largely reflected on social media especially on blog sites and Facebook. Since the Western Province is home to the largest number of computer and internet uses in the country by default the ideas and views reflected on the social media are largely of those who have such facilities in the province which is to a larger extent detached from the ground realities especially about the rural areas of the country. In other worlds the predictions about the upcoming presidential election claiming a certain victory for Mythripala Sirisena are mostly from the arm-chair pundits and the internet worries.

We have an excellent example about those internet worries who got a bloody nose at the end predicting about an outcome of yet another closely fought contest- precisely a battle. This was none other than the Eelam War-IV that decided the fate of the LTTE. It took about one to two years for the LTTE supports especially among the Tamil diaspora in the West and in Tamil Nadu to come to terms that their beloved "boys" and their leader "Sun God" were wiped out from the face of earth. The internet worries of LTTE were predicting about one victory after another by their "boys" or army divisions being wiped out in their numbers. The imminent fall of LTTE strongholds were ridiculed. Even after the total defeat of LTTE was declared by the government, there had been a firm belief among the LTTE supporters that their leader would soon appear from nowhere and orchestrate a total rout of SL armed forces. That was the extent of unfounded and false predictions that were being circulated by the internet worriers who were completely detached from the ground realities.

As I pointed out in one of my previous posts "except among Tamil and Muslim voters M. Sirisena has not been able to make a big dent among Rajapaksha's voter base and the latter enjoys almost the same level of support that he enjoyed in 2010 among rural Sinhala Buddhist voters".

So it seems a yet another bunch of internet worries is heading for a certain bloody nose in a few days' time!

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