News Update - 20051117
*** Topics: Election day, Media reporting and bias ***
**Election coverage:
Today is election day. As this post is being written, voting is underway island-wide. It will be finished in a few hours' time. Updated election vote counts might be available here http://www.theacademic.org/elect/ sometime after the polls close.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4439050.stm - Reports already indicate that Tamils are staying away from the polls in a very drastic fashion.
** Media reporting and bias:
The election is receiving a lot of coverage in the media, and differing viewpoints are being reported. Most articles say the same basic story, but they have their discrepancies.
From Colombo, the capital and in the Sinhala-predominant South, the Reuters news agency implies that the LTTE effects control on the Tamils living in the areas under its control through intimidation and coercion.
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2005-11-17T014442Z_01_YUE536085_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SRILANKA-ELECTION.xml
Meanwhile, another article written in Colombo by the Financial Times portrays the LTTE as purposefully inciting fear into the Tamils who live in government controlled areas by withdrawing their political cadres from those areas (due to the constant ongoing daily killings). The LTTE is viewed by those Tamils as a key civil protection [against the SL troops stationed in the cities], it states. This logic of vicariously instilled fear is being also being used to rationalize why an election boycott could be 'forced' to take place in areas not under LTTE jurisdiction, even if the Tamils do not agree with the LTTE.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/56b1fa84-570e-11da-b98c-00000e25118c.html
Most news stories like to portray the two candidates as opposites, one for peace and unregulated economy, the other for war and a socialist economy. This overlooks the anti-LTTE statements made by pro-peace UNP confidantes of Ranil (which makes them not so different from their anti-peace anti-LTTE opponent, Rajapakse).
If the Tamils were to vote, they would vote for Ranil for lack of a better choice. A Tamil politician who just happens to be a part of Ranil's party urges cancelling the plans for the boycott, for reasons no other report saw worth mentioning.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4438214.stm
Descriptions of the Tamils as "king-makers" are sometimes used, but such an epithet does not fit in a situation where voting does not happen. This is seen as a rejection of democratic norms and freedoms, but others argue that 'democracy' means something different in Sri Lanka.
http://www.tamilguardian.com/beta/news_details.asp?newsid=371
http://www.tamilguardian.com/beta/news_details.asp?newsid=368
Perhaps the best on-location reporting from a non-native journalist comes from a person who actually spent a week in the North East last week.
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=33499
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=33699