The past haunts the electorate

In the last week’s editorial, we said that this presidential election was being fought in cyber space. Even though we do not wish to retreat from that stance, we are compelled to accept that this presidential election seems to be taking the country backward several centuries.
We are on the verge of a decisive election and we are losing our patience day by day! Let me put it this way. Although the presidential candidates are using state-of-the-art technology in their campaigns, those things that mattered when trying to win an election more than a century ago, seem to be still lingering in the minds of the voters as well as candidates.
This times presidential election is like Veddhas equipped with T56 or M16 rifles hammering the enemies, using them as their famous halberd, instead of shooting by them. It is the same old Veddahs who are fighting and the same old way they were used centuries back, though now they have advanced weaponry.
Casteism has raised its ugly head during the run up to this election. Although it is not entertained by either the media or people publicly, we still can see how this debased notion, which should be seen as shameful, is being whispered in certain quarters.
When we look at the contemporary political history of Sri Lanka, we are able to find enough examples how casteism had played a very prominent role in electing members to the then Legislative Council and later to the Parliament and to the Presidency.
S.W.R.D Bandaranaike, who returned to Sri Lanka in the 1920s, did not draft a document about a conflict between the minority Tamils and majority Sinhalese that we now talk off, but a clash between up country Sinhalese and low country Sinhalese based on cast.
The cast politics Sri Lanka suffered was even more apparent in the contest to appoint the ‘Educated Ceylonese’ to the Legislative Council. Dr. Marcus Fernando, a prominent Sinhalese from the southern part of the country, lost the contest to Ponnambalam Ramanadan as a result of caste discrimination, even though the majority of voters were Sinhalese.
According to academics and scholars who have done research about caste politics in Sri Lanka, the most recent victim of it was the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was able to crush the caste barriers to ascertain power.
However, Sri Lankans allowed themselves to believe that the people had become matured politically and this type of petty perspective was no longer considered in electing political leaders to serve the country.
Now this is the time to wake up from that fine dream and face reality. People still do whisper about casteism when electing public representatives and those representatives who seek the support of the public know about this and use it as an underlying theme to compensate for votes they may lose because of their caste, with the votes from the member of the caste they belong to.
Surely we have arrived at a stage where voters should be mature enough in casting their votes without considering the caste of the person but of his values and leadership qualities.

Stop violence
Up to now four people have died, more than 600 acts of violence have been reported and there are enough media reports to suggest that the worst is yet to come. Are we in the millennium where the whole world had great expectations or in a primitive era where the law of the jungle rules?
It is sad to see how almost all the law enforcement authorities have become unable to control these acts of violence and this poses a serious threat towards a free and fair election. The law enforcement authorities should take the responsibility in preventing these acts of hooliganism and both the people and the politicians should be mindful of not letting the country slip backwards, as this was not the country we hoped for after May 18, last year.