Promised, Delivered?

U gotta be kiddin me... the UPFA election slogan should be changed to Rajapakse Promised, Fonseka Delivered. With all the partisanship of the present presidential election its very difficult view facts objectively without falling into any political camp, like Gen. Fonseka said if ur gonna clean up garbage, u gotta be ready to get ur hands dirty.

Thus. in my attempt to try and decipher the happenings leading up to the capture and killing of Prabhakaran, its inevitable that i too should fall in to certain political camp.

In any case as far as the UPFA slogan goes.... yes Mahinda did promise a lot under the Mahinda Chintana, how much of that has been delivered and how much has been delivered by Rajapakse himself.

One of the cornerstones of the '04 election campaign was Mahinda's hardline stance on the LTTE. During the latter part of the war, droves of people supported this approach, as evidenced by the landslide victories for the UPFA in the Provincial elections that were held during the period.

So it seems that apart from the victories in the battlefield, the Rajapakse regime has been deficient at meeting their other promises. Now, the milllion dollar question.. who is really responsible for these victories?

In all honesty Mahinda was nothing more than a political ponnaya that swung all ways possible during the war... he bent so far to expose his rather sizeable backside to the Indians... on one occasion even promising that Prabhakaran would be handed over to the Indians,, if he was captured... so much for the persona he tries to project as being a strong leader that was unshaken by international pressure.

If it wasn't for our boys in the army and the unwavering command they had... and Mahinda was allowed to do what he wanted... then this war would have been over even before it started. Credit should go to the army for taking the war beyond a point of no-return. I use that word literally, and I shall proceed to define it as thus... this time around the point of no-return was not one that was dictated by the itnernational community but rather by the millions of people in this country that voted Rajapakse into power.

So in essence Mahinda had two choices... bow down to international pressure and supposedly stop the war( we are told that the IC wanted the war stopped... bear in mind tho that India wanted it to continue and thus, the so called international pressure actually bears very little significance)... or listen to the people of this country that wanted every last terrorist exterminated... being the shrewd politican that he is Mahinda took the latter option and thus ensured a series of election victories... an aura of invincibility that meant more swindling of public funds for him and his family and ensured that the war would be the foremost election slogan against the UNP for at least another 5 years.