Is Sri Lanka Ready To Elect A Tamil Or A Muslim As President?

By Lankamithra –March 31, 2017

“Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism”  ~ Benazir Bhutto

Is Sri Lanka ready to elect a Tamil or a Muslim as President? If qualified, they should not hesitate

Sadiq Khan

London is now home to more than 8.6 million people, the highest the city’s population has been since 1939. What’s more, 44% of London now consists of black and ethnic minorities, compared to only 28.9% in 2001. That’s according to the Greater London Authority, which serves the London mayor’s office. Islam is London’s second largest religion. 38% of England’s Muslims live in London, where they represent 12.4% of the population (Source: Wikipedia). Yet London elected Sadiq Khan, a Muslim as its Mayor. In voting registers, London has an overwhelming majority of Anglo Saxon whites. England customarily is, when it was a dominant colonial power, considered in the 19th and 20th centuries as a predominant member of the ‘whites only’ club in the international sphere. Britain’s cruel and merciless treatment of her subject people, especially in India, has been chronicled for future generations to read and judge. Great Britain may have secured somewhat an enviable station in the journey of man since his departure from the ancient caves into civilization. Yet that same history, I hope, would not hesitate to pen the appalling atrocities the British Raj committed on the innocent Indian civilians on numerous occasions. As far back as 1930, Winston Churchill hit headlines when he said about a famous Indian, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor“. That nation, whose one-time leader was Churchill himself, has come a long way from that snobbish, patronizing and condescending conduct and embraced a more humble, egalitarian and realistic attitude towards its own minorities.

Let us look at the demographics in the United States of America (USA):

Voting population by ethnic group:

A country whose voting population was 74% White, voted an African-American (Black) from a community that consists of mere 13% as President. These two examples, USA and London are two extreme cases where a minority leader has been elected to the highest office by voting populations which are overwhelmingly white.

Now compare the demographics in London and the USA to those of Sri Lanka, and specifically in the context of Sri Lanka’s Tamil population: Sinhalese 74.9%, Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%, Sri Lankan Moors 9.2%, Indian Tamil 4.2%, others 0.5%. Total Tamil population is 11.2+4.2=15.4%. Is Sri Lanka ready to elect a Tamil as President?

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