To the hustings!

I always love a good election and I was kind of glad that I'd be in Colombo during the lead up to Tuesday's vote. My parents weren't too enthused with my timing because they remembered election violence, assassinations and all sorts of other lovely things when they still lived and were able to vote. On the whole, aside from all the Mahinda love, things were pretty tame in my opinion.

There was that one evening though...

I was on my way home in a 588 cab, making a left turn onto the Galle Road, there was a pick up truck reversing erratically in our direction. The cabbie lent on the horn, but the pick up kept coming at us, the windows were darkly tinted and one slowly rolled down, a man with bloodshot eyes looked at my driver, waved a pistol at him, shook his head and the pick up continued erratically along. The cabbie and I just looked at each other dumbfounded and he told me that because of the elections exchanges like the one we just had were more common place.

Great! Nothing like pissing yourself at 3:20 in the morning to remind you how fantastic it is to live in a country where only 30% of the public gives a shit enough to vote and 'election violence' means a paper cut.