LTTE leader Prabhakaran rumored dead.

A preliminary report is here.

And I say, good riddance to bad rubbish. This inhuman s.o.b assassinated an Indian Prime Minister, (Sinhalese) politicians, rival Sri Lankan Tamil politicians, recruited children to be cannon fodder and led thousands of his followers into death and desolation. On principle, I oppose anyone who kills innocents in the name of some holy cause of religion or ethnicity or political belief.


Parallelly in India, the voters of Tamil Nadu have voted against the pro LTTE parties and handed them a convincing defeat. It is insane for a vocal minority in Tamil Nadu or the West to ask India to interfere in the another nation's internal affairs just because some people there speak the same language as some Indian Citizens. If this kind of reasoning is valid, Pakistan's meddling in Kashmir is valid too. At best, it is a superficial activity like our own NRIs (Non resident Indians) pontificating about what policies India should adopt while working towards American citizenships. Hypocrites all!


No matter what happens in SriLanka, it is matter for *Sri Lankans* to resolve. India can use peaceful means to try influencing Sri Lanka for sure but sending the Indian Army to fight in Sri Lanka and arming/ tolerating the LTTE before that was stupidity of the first order. Sri Lanka will work out its solutions as per the wishes of the Sri Lankans.

To conclude, congratulations to the Sri Lankan Army. Now, if the Sinhalese leadership can follow military victory with a halfway decent political reform/reconciliation effort, that will be the end of this insurgency and this part of the world will have peace.

Here is to hoping the Islamic terrorists get wiped off the pages of history as well. Hopefully Osama Bin Laden and his gang of fanatics will soon hang from the lamp posts too. Then the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace.

Election Results today

The results to the parliament elections will be known in a couple of hours. Just a short note here to record my appreciation of how lucky I am to be living in a democracy. If I were born in China (for e.g, or North korea or Saudi Arabia ... ), I would probably have gone to the wall long ago.


Even with all its ills and the wrong people winning sometimes (e.g Mr Shashi Tharoor, an audacious carpetbagger, is leading in my home constituency as I write this. Ugh!), democracy is still the best system in the world and I am blessed to live in one!



PS:Still many things to improve. Web coverage of the elections is abysmal. The Election Commission's website crashed. They run the site on IIS/ WinXP (!!!).

Voting against Shashi Tharoor

I'll be writing a detailed blog post on this later, but Shashi Tharoor, who is the Congress candidate from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala (my home state) is, in my opinion, the worst kind of carpetbagger ever in my electoral district's history and I will not be voting for him.

He has never lived in Kerala (as far as I can make out), leave alone Thiruvananthapuram, can't speak the local language (http://ibnlive.in.com/news/tharoor-campaign-hampered-by-language-barrier/89617-37.html), has no political experience (I guess losing the fight to be the UN Secretary General *is* experience ;-)), can't stand being questioned on his beliefs (he walked out of a TV interview because he thought the crowd was "unruly") and has no distinctive ideas I can make out from his writings. Apparently his academic qualifications and his diplomatic experience, such as it is is supposed to make up for his not being able to converse with his constituents, leave alone understand them. He was imposed on this constituency as a candidate, over ruling local part sentiment by the Congress "high command" which is another strike against him in my eyes.



I am electorally neutral and I don't belong to any political party, but I'd vote for anyone but Mr.Tharoor in this election.

Any Tharoor supporters on the intarwebz please don't bring up the Obama comparison. Obama is a Harvard grad , but he also has the street smarts of a Chicago politician, superb communication skills *and* ideas of his own.

I hope and pray Mr.Tharoor goes down to a massive defeat, thus sending a signal to other would-be carpetbaggers. I'll go out on a limb here and predict that Mr T will lose badly in the 6 way contest.

Of course, India being a democracy, I can only cast *my* vote as I see fit. If the majority vote goes to him, then he becomes my MP and that is as it should be. May that day never come!