Malinda says;It is the same with the Maithripala Sirisena campaign, for different reasons of course. Someone commented on Facebook that if Sarath Fonseka was the ‘SMS President,’ Maithripala is the Web President’. The ‘Common Candidate’ has a clear edge in virtual space. Freshness, regime-fatigue, the President’s face being too in-your-face wherever you look and of course all the negatives of his presidency may have contributed to this state of affairs. Still, outside of the internet, there’s very little vote-solicitation to be seen. Maithripala is a renegade and despite key politicians from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) siding with him, he doesn’t have the party machinery to back him (that Mahinda Rajapaksa is not making use of it or the machine is showing lukewarm response to all entreaties is another matter of course). Maithripala and his backers can make a lot of noise in cyberspace and on the Satana program on Sirasa TV, but if nothing happens on the ground, then Mahinda Rajapaksa gets the vote by default. The Maithripala campaign can easily get sidetracked by mistaking large crowds at rallies as assured votes. People attend for a variety of reasons. Sometimes you are drawn to rallies just because you happen to be passing by. Some people come out of curiosity. Some come because they are bored and because anything, even political rallies, is entertainment for the bored. This is his dilemma: When Champika Ranawaka or Ven Athureliye Rathana Thero speak, votes get fixed; when Rajitha Senaratne speaks, nothing happens; when Chandrika Kumaratunga speaks, he loses votes; when Maithripala himself or Ranil Wickremesinghe speaks, people listen and the candidate begins to be considered; the JVP’s support-without-saying-it exercise, in fact, does more for Maithripala than what the likes of Rajitha and Chandrika do. The campaign on the ground is yet to see a coordinated house-to-house vote-solicitation exercise launched by the constituent parties of the coalition backing Maithripala. Doors are not getting knocked on. And time is running out. Read more;
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 18:39:04 +0000
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