Fonseka vows to lead new Salvation Army

As I write General (rtd) Sarath Fonseka is rushing to make his announcement about the so-called common candidacy and leading a motley UNP plus JVP combine to change the politics of Sri Lanka.

The so-called UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe’s demand that Fonseka should wholly accept the policy of the new and strange United National Front, the alliance of opportunism in the face of defeat, is no doubt grabbing political and public attention today.

Military aspect

Whatever one may feel of Fonseka’s decision to shed his uniform so fast, albeit after several extensions in his earlier rank as Army Commander that compelled some good people below him to retire, this insistence on his accepting what this ‘manifesto’ so hastily put together with sharp contradictions in policy, appears aimed to diminish whatever respect the public have for his handling the military aspect of the strategy that defeated the LTTE, so decisively.

The public are still to be told any of the details of the proposed political arrangements, under which Ranil Wickremesinghe is determined to be Prime Minister in a new caretaker government, and how the Executive Presidency is to be abolished.

Nothing of the Constitutional requirements for this change have been explained, unless we are made to understand that Fonseka and the new opponents of the Executive Presidency will resort to unconstitutional means, which includes violence too, to achieve their goal. No wonder the JVP is there too.

While the whirligig of politics will throw up its failures, dropouts, idiots and the ever expectant fakes in patriotic and democratic garb, there are developments abroad that are proof of the overall success of the Mahinda Rajapaksa strategy for the defeat of terrorism and insurgency, in Sri Lanka. The immediate example is the defeat of the LTTE candidate in the move by the Sri Lankan Tamil expatriates of pro-LTTE persuasion to form a ‘Trans-national Eelam Government in Exile’, which made its debut in, not surprisingly Norway.

At least 90 percent of Tamil expatriates expected to participate in his launch event abstained from voting, and that Nediyavan, who succeeded KP as the new LTTE leader, was in for total disappointment when Tamils in Norway rejected his leadership. The Norway based LTTE leader decided to hold the first phase of ‘Eelam Trans-national ‘government’ election in Norway, hoping for a resounding victory to force Oslo to recognise the separatist outfit. But only 2,667 out of a total of 27,000 Tamils in Norway voted.

The LTTE candidate for leadership of the new ‘Trans-national Eelam Government’ lost to one Vijaya Shankar a South Indian Tamil from Chennai, who came first with 1,864 votes, defeating the LTTE’s Nediyavan. With the leadership of the new outfit gone to South India, which is proof of the larger dimensions of Prabhakaran’s dream of Eelam not being confined to a part of Sri Lanka, it is now felt that attempts will be made to revive Tamil separatism in Tamil Nadu, which will make it come into open confrontation with the Indian authorities, who are just now gearing up for stronger action against the other terrorist elements operations such as the Naxalites and Maoists, in a vest swathe of Union territory, making greater use of the Armed Forces for the purpose.

Tamils rejecting LTTE

Of greater importance for Sri Lanka, is the fact that the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil community wrongfully termed the ‘Tamil Diaspora’, having no claims whatever to be a Diaspora by definition or practice, is fast getting sick and tired of the LTTE and its tactics.

They are settling down to accepting the reality of its defeat, and moving on with their lives, without the threats, extortion and violence that was attached to the LTTE. They are increasingly showing signs of being ready to accept the new realities in Sri Lanka.

This is a reality that politicians in the UK who were wooing the expatriate Sri Lankan Tamil vote, which accounts for nearly 200,000 will have to take note of. As many former Sri Lankan Tamils, now settled down in the UK, told me in the past two weeks, there is no more bloc vote of Tamils either for Labour or the Tories. The support they drew during the days of the LTTE’s battle with the Sri Lankan State, and with the hope and promise of victory have now faded away, bringing much more peace, quiet and security to their lives.

With Gordon Brown signalling a Spring election, with the shortest ever - seven minutes - Speech from the Throne by Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday (18) the two major parties, as well as the Liberal Democrats may have to think twice about the certainties they once had of a block Tamil vote coming in their favour, for all the much publicized attacks they carried out against Sri Lanka, especially in the last months of the war to defeat the LTTE.

Adding to the comfort and satisfaction of the Tamils in Europe is this week’s decision by a French to jail 21 LTTE cadres convicted of extorting millions of euros from the Tamil community in France.

The toughest sentence of seven years was given to Nadaraja Matinthiran, whom the court heard was the leader of the LTTE in France, and was accused of extorting some five million euros (7.4 million dollars) from France’s 75,000-strong Tamil community. The court also ordered that the Coordinating Committee of Tamils-France be dismantled after ruling that it was a front for the LTTE, which is on the European Union’s list of terror groups.

The Zurich accord

A matter of further significance, following the defeat of the LTTE by the combined effort of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, was last weeks Zurich meeting of 16 political parties - a cross section from the TNA to the EPDP, TULF and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress and PLOTE - to explore possibilities for future cooperation towards the development of a common political platform for the representation of Sri Lanka’s Tamil speaking peoples within the political framework of pre and post-election Sri Lanka.

Lobby power

When the truth is said it is necessary to give even the devil its due acknowledgment. Channel 4 News UK, which smeared itself in the mud of falsehood, media bias, and unverified inaccuracy in reporting that rogue video footage of the alleged summary killing of unarmed Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan troops, seemed to have resurrected itself to some level of credibility when it made a very good expose of how the Jewish Lobby in the UK, is strongly influencing both the Conservative and Labour parties with its seemingly unlimited funds. There main target was the Conservative Party and especially its leader and widely acknowledged Prime Minister in waiting David Cameron, and former leader William Hague, who can hardly escape the strong suspicions of singing or being silent, in keeping with the size of cheques that come in from the pro-Israel lobby - the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).

In its ‘Despatches’ program on Monday (16) Channel 4 showed how William Hague faced threats of a withdrawal of funding from CFI after he described a retaliatory attack by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 as ‘disproportionate’.

The program also described in considerable detail how Tory leader David Cameron allegedly accepted a œ15,000 donation from Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish billionaire who chairs Bicom (the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre). Zabludowizc, the program revealed has business interests in an illegal West Bank settlement. He also gave œ50,000 to Conservative Central Office, which Zabludowicz says “are a matter of public record”.

William Hague allegedly accepted personal donations from CFI board members totalling tens of thousands of Pounds after being appointed shadow Foreign Secretary. More than œ30,000 from CFI supporters went to the campaign funds of members of Cameron’s team who were first elected in 2005, the program claimed using publicly available information.

It was shocking that at last the annual dinner with the CFI, David Cameron had not mentioned one word about the disproportionate nature of the Israeli attacks on Gaza in the war last year which killed over 1,300 Palestinians, mainly women and children, despite it being a topic of much political interest at the time. The feel of funds from the CFI in his pocket was unmistakable from the report.

The expectation is that if, and most likely when, the Conservatives win the next general election here, there will be a strongly pro-Israeli policy in place, which will be working in tandem with the Hillary Clinton lobby in Washington.

Funding Fonseka

What is necessary to keep in mind is that although the majority of Tamils in the UK, and it seems elsewhere in Europe too, are moving away from the LTTE, the vast funds it held are still unaccounted for, and could well form the core funding of the new lobby groups that may emerge to further the cause of the larger Eelam, with emphasis on Sri Lanka.

The exposure of how the pro-Israeli lobby can virtually buy over whole political parties (the Labour Party is no exception) shows a negative aspect of Western democracy, far removed from what is projected to us in the developing world, and also the duplicity of these governments over issues such as human rights, democracy and matters of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

While the majority of Tamils in the UK are ready to smile with Sri Lanka in the changing situation for their kith and kin here, it will be necessary to keep a close watch on desperate political organizations, such as the UNF, that is placing conditions for Gen. (Rtd) Sarath Fonseka, to be its Presidential candidate.

It will be good to begin probing how much of the LTTE’s stacked away funds are behind the moves to use Fonseka as the candidate to prop up those who scoffed at his handling of the war against the LTTE all the while, and have said that the army he led was no better than the Salvation Army.

They may believe that Fonseka is the saviour so badly needed in their politics of desperate opportunism, to lead the Salvation Army of the politically desperate.

He is now showing all signs of being ready to make a bid to save these types who are fast approaching the nadir of politics in Sri Lanka and are most likely funded by the hidden hoards of the LTTE - what is left of the funds used to fight the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and carry out such violence against Sri Lankan civilians.

Onward desperate soldiers, a leader is at hand - the Salvation Army takes stride in a battle for power, not souls.