evidence: At an SLPP gathering in Bandarawela, Minister Shehan Semasinghe said that the SLPP should continue to support President Wickremesinghe. Speaking on the same occasion, Namal Rajapaksa assured the gathered faithful, "We will not sunder the confidence you have in President Mahinda Rajapaksa." At the SLPP’s district conference in Matara, Minister Kanchana Wijesekara said that the UNP and the SLPP will get together to form a government. Speaking at the same gathering, Rajapaksa nephew Nipuna Ranawaka said, "We will take care of who becomes presidential candidate and who becomes president. We will win the election, form a SLPP government and show..." [...] Inability to understand this has turned opposition shrill and government ham-fisted. The targeted and brutal arrest of award-winning journalist Tharindu Uduwaragedara illustrates the latter fallacy. The point is not about Uduwaragedara’s profession or his professional ethics. No Lankan exercising his or her constitutional right to peaceful dissent, whatever his or her profession, should be treated that way. Nor is such intolerance of democratic dissent the path to greater electoral acceptance. It will merely enhance voter disenchantment and drive up that ‘none of the above’ column.