But I Just Got My Nails Done...

Today was the presidential Election here in Sri Lanka. I am secretly hoping the guy that promised everyone a cow wins, but it’s not likely. I visited 20 polling places with several members of The Centre for Society and Religion; a local NGO. There were two women from the office that did most of the heavy lifting, my German friend, Kristina, is interning with this group and she got me involved and came with us as well. Kristina’s English is improving by leaps and bounds, but her Sinhalese is worse than mine. We got these cool PAFFREL armbands, hats and I.D.’s but were pretty much relegated to standing around and being stared at by the poll workers. As a rule, most of the big kahunas at the polling places were happy to see us and answer our standard questions…have you had any incidents; how’s the turnout; how many parties are represented by the workers at the polls…etc. One guy, about mid-day, started to get snarky with one of our fellow monitors. The gist of his comments was that he didn’t have to answer any of our questions and was told by the electorate commission not to cooperate with us. I admit, I was sort of wool-gathering at this point, but got a very unsubtle elbow in the side from one of my fellow observers. I had no idea at the time what this Machiavellian little power monger was saying, but I sure didn’t like his tone of voice. When he stopped to take a breath, I asked rather loudly, “Just what seems to be the problem here?” My colleagues smiled and started to tell me in halting English that this fellow didn’t wish to give us any information. I frowned, waved my hand in an imperious manner and walked off appearing to be dialing my cell phone. Apparently, he was much more helpful after that. You just never know when a background in theater is going to come in handy.

Rule number one: Always ask the highly trained professionals with the automatic weapons first if it's okay to enter the polling area.

(We were not allowed to take photos. This is from the Assosciated Press)

All in all, it was a lot like an election in America…but without Florida. The polls were only open from 7:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. Apparently violence has marred so many of the elections here that the goal is to finish up and scamper home as soon as possible and definitely before dark. One other interesting difference is the permanent marker used to color the tip and nail of the left pinky finger. It keeps anyone that might be inclined, from voting more than once. They also have separate lines for men and women. I honestly don’t know why, women have had the vote here since 1931. They also indicate in the rather confusing instructions to the voters, that they can mark a first, second and third choice on their ballot. No one I spoke to seems to know why…I posited that perhaps it was like Miss America, “If, for any reason, our newly crowned Miss America is unable to fulfill her duties, the title will fall to the first runner up…” Maybe? These and other questions I hope to have answered by my continued close scrutiny of the local news.
The quote of the day is shared by me and Brigid. We were in the van on the way to our first polling place and she was reviewing the question checklist with me since it was all in Sinhalese. She got about halfway down the list and read the following: “Has anyone been killed during the polling? That…..that….that…uh…” At which point I interjected, “That would be bad.” “Um, yes.” Kristina started to crack up, but managed to stop herself and disguise it with a cough.
So far, it looks like it has gone without incident, but we have been instructed to lie low the next day as well since there may be unhappy citizens about when the results are announced.