Rajapaksa faces first challenge at Sri Lanka polls

Feizal Samath, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 15. 2009 10:54PM UAE / November 15. 2009 6:54PM GMT

The Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been accused of human rights groups of surpressing the media. Eranga Jayawardena / AP

COLUMBO // For the first time in 15 years, political developments have unfolded that threaten the dominance of Sri Lanka’s ruling party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

Sarath Fonseka, the popular army general who has recently fallen out with the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has turned a weak opposition into a powerful political force and pushed the government from a once invincible position to one of uncertainty before presidential and parliamentary elections due in the next few months.

There has been rampant speculation that the general will run for president, but so far he has neither confirmed nor denied this. When asked of his intentions by reporters last week, Gen Fonseka said he would make a decision after his retirement takes effect today.

What General Fonseka, the former chief of defence forces, and widely credited with leading the army to victory against the Tamil Tiger rebels in May, would be doing in the future was foremost on the president’s mind when he addressed the annual convention of his party in Colombo last night. There, he implied the presidential poll would be likely to be held before parliamentary elections.

The president asked the large crowd of party supporters which election they wanted first. They responded, with a show of hands, in favour of the presidential poll. “I will put it to the party [hierarchy] and they will consider your wishes,” he told the cheering crowd.

Earlier yesterday, government sources said the date of the next election would be announced through an official notification next week. Parliamentary polls must be held before April, as the constitution requires the elections every six years. The last parliamentary poll was held in April 2004.

Although a presidential election is not required before 2011, Mr Rajapaksa has been keen on advancing the date in light of his declining popularity, which peaked after the war victory against the Tigers. But the public spat with Gen Fonseka, Sri Lanka’s most-decorated soldier and now widely expected to run against Mr Rajapaksa at the next poll, has dimmed the former’s chances and radically altered the political landscape.

Mr Rajapaksa has until now faced little serious resistance from an opposition that has struggled to find ways of countering him. But this political hegemony has shown unprecedented cracks with the emergence of a new leader for opposition forces to rally around, political analysts said.

“The Sarath Fonseka factor has rejuvenated the opposition and given them a lot of optimism,” said Jehan Perera, the director of the National Peace Council, who writes a weekly political commentary in the English-language Island newspaper. “He has given them a lot of hope.”

Wijedasa Rajapaksa, no relation of the president, but a former minister and ruling party MP who recently crossed over to opposition ranks, said the rift between the president and his brother, the defence secretary Gotabhaya, and Gen Fonseka had to do with war “credits”.

“Fonseka says politicians are taking credit for a war won by the soldiers while Rajapaksa [and his brothers] say it is the Rajapaksas that won the war,” he said. “People now have realised who the real hero is … and that’s Fonseka.”

Mr Rajapaksa, his brother and Gen Fonseka formed the war cabinet that made all the battlefield decisions and was considered a powerful group until after the battle ended in May, when Gen Fonseka was shunted and given the position of chief of defence staff that had little actual power, according to the general himself. The Rajapaskas, it has been reported, were worried the general would stage a military coup, which he has denied.

On Thursday, Gen Fonseka told President Rajapaksa he was retiring from his post, and in a letter published in all newspapers, said the president had sidelined him despite “winning the war” for the country.

“I was determined to achieve this victory as I wanted to ensure that there is permanent peace and security for the future generation of the motherland,” Gen Fonseka said.

Among many other complaints against Mr Rajapaksa in the letter, Gen Fonseka said the president misled him to believe his appointment as chief of defence staff had authority over all the armed forces when it fact it “was purely to coordinate the services and not that of overall operational command”.

The sudden burst of Gen Fonseka onto the political scene has excited politicos in a way reminiscent of the entry of Chandrika Kumaratunga into politics in the 1990s. The daughter of two former prime ministers, she returned to Sri Lanka from Britain, where she had been living, to lead the SLFP to victory in 1994 in parliamentary and presidential polls against the United National Party (UNP), the main opposition force.

“Discipline has collapsed and we feel the general can restore law and order and discipline,” said Amila Mikshantha, a young office aide in the capital. “Everyone is looking for a new leadership.”

Mr Rajapaksa and the government have been accused by human rights groups and the international community over rights abuses, suppression of the media and a breakdown in law and order, and discipline – which have all aversely affected its popularity.

The presidential election may see a three-way contest between Mr Rajapaksa, Gen Fonseka and the UNP leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Some newspapers yesterday said Mr Wickremesinghe was considering contesting as the UNP candidate while Gen Fonseka would be a candidate from the opposition People’s Liberation Front (JVP).


foreign.desk@thenational.ae