Dr. Tharoor versus Gordon Campbell

I am overjoyed to report that Dr. Shashi Tharoor has won in the Trivandrum constituency. He has won by a wide margin (80,000 votes or so). His first symbolic act, before counting even started, was to tear down his own election posters throughout the city (this was widely reported in both the English-language and Malayalam newspapers). Truly it seems like a new day dawning for Trivandrum, the state of Kerala and India. Also very happy with the outcome is Ajay who runs the fascinating Trivandrum Rising blog and is one of the members of the Trivandrum Development Front that will hopefully be working with Dr. Sharoor in charting a course for Trivandrum's future.

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth here in Kerala about the poor turnout for this election with a state-wide average of 73.33% being bemoaned as quite low. But compared to the other place on earth that likes to think of itself as God's own country (am I the only British Columbian that remembers us referring to our province this way?) this is stunningly good. I was horrified to read that voter turnout in BC was only 48% for the May 12th election. Shame (although of course I can hardly talk since I didn't vote either).

And what about our premier - hard to see how Gordon Campbell in any way measures up to Shashi Tharoor - previously with the UN, prolific writer, founder of the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, fluent in English, French, Hindi and Malayalam etc. etc. Of course there are no mug shots of Dr. Tharoor to be found in #1 spot when you do a Google image search for him :) so I guess perhaps GC has greater notoriety.