Political Perspective - By The Third Eye

Govt on peace platform. Opposition on ‘war footing’

President Mahinda Rajapaksa has been extremely fortunate ever since he staged his stakes at the biggest political office of the State, for it is his political Opposition that has proved to be his biggest ally in disguise. Due to convoluted political perception and crass lack of vision, the Opposition always picked the wrong political horse to back, thereby allowing President Rajapaksa a free run in his popularity.

Take the naming of General Fonseka as the Opposition candidate for the forthcoming Presidential Election an example. Throughout the period of the war, the Opposition derided President Rajapaksa and the Security Forces discounting the country’s territorial integrity and national self respect.

People realized the unpatriotic character of the Opposition and as a result the President’s popularity soared. Now that the war is over, it is time for rehabilitation and to catch up with the lost years of development. But ironically now the Opposition is fielding a retired Army General as if it is the continuity of war, instead of peace, that the opposition needs. The opposition strategy at that time was inappropriate then as its current strategy is inappropriate now.

Thus the Opposition has proved they can only follow, lacking in vision to give leadership to the country. The President, therefore need not go out of the way to assert his popularity because the Opposition in their overzealous chicanery has always proved itself to be out of context and time.

The Opposition thinking in forwarding a retired General for election this time is based on the premise that, since it is the war that made the President popular, the best way to make inroads into his popularity is to field a war hero for the coming election. Such thinking again exhibits the political naivety and lack of empathy of the current UNP leadership. People in this country are politically wiser than Ranil Wickremesinghe expects them to be.

They did not favour Rajapaksa because of the war. After all, what the President did was what any national leader should do when the nation’s security was at stake.

What the UNP should have done during that time was, to offer constructive criticism and to extend unstinted cooperation to ward off the threat. Instead, the UNP worked nationally and internationally to embarrass the security operations and justify the national adversary, the LTTE.

And that is why the UNP vote base eroded while that of the President soared. But the UNP’s entrenched obsessions with western theories prevented clear thinking on simple issues. Now that the war is behind, the nation is looking forward for consolidation and a development take off.

The UNP is now coming with a retired General simply because it wishes to attract those ‘votes in favour of war’. Ironically there are no votes, and have never been, in favour of war in this country. If at all Rajapaksa is popular it is because he fought the war resolutely and finished it while the UNP vacillated and exacerbated it with ‘political solutions’.

People do not fancy war and military operation is the last thing they expect. They know that ‘war leaders’ could never lead a country during times of peace. But the UNP seem to think that the people prefer war heroes for their own sake. Had the UNP fielded General Fonseka in 2005 he probably would have had a better chance of a victory because at that time we needed somebody to take on Prabhakaran: but certainly not now when the war is behind us.

About General Fonseka, Ranil is reported to have said that “There is no reason to believe that he is not a democrat”. Well, for 40 years Fonseka received and gave ‘one way commands’ in the military. When an Army man receives orders to ‘execute’ and if he asks ‘why?’ he would run the risk of getting executed himself. That is the ‘democracy’ in the military. For Ranil anybody is a ‘democrat’ when it suits his political expediency. The UNP even bestowed the title of ‘sole representative of the Tamils’ on that megalomaniac Prabhakaran because he too may have been a ‘democrat’ in Ranil’s perception.

For 15 years, the current UNP leadership has been driving the UNP downhill bringing its share of votes to a mere 23 percent. Such a record of defeat with the same leader still holding the party saddle is without a parallel in the democratic world. Inspite of this Wickremesinghe must be considering himself too, to be a ‘democrat’. These are the ‘democrats’ who are trying to save Sri Lanka from the ‘alleged dictatorship’.

General Fonseka’s security has turned out to be the latest national issue with the Opposition. The Government may be capable of protecting its former Army Commander; but when that same Army Commander enters politics, amongst the very Tigers he once fought, his security is bound to be volatile. It is from his own new political ‘friends’ that Fonseka needs to be protected from and that would be an arduous task for the Government to perform.

If Sri Lanka is heading for a dictatorship as alleged by the Opposition, it is the Opposition that has to take the responsibility, because over the years it has consistently followed ‘asinine policies’ distancing itself from the people, making itself politically weak and increasingly insignificant.

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