Sarath, Sarath, Tilvin and Mangala: not ‘strange bedfellows’ after all!
 There are those who are upset with me for showing up Sarath Fonseka
for being a political neophyte, a two-tongued creature who has no clue
about what he wants, has a penchant for promising the sun and moon and
other things undeliverable, is consumed by unhealthy levels of hatred
and revenge-intent and is ready to bed with crooks, traitors, thugs and
other insufferable clowns. They complain that I am not critical of
Mahinda Rajapaksa. So let me begin with an apology.
I am sorry. I am sorry that not everyone knows that I write to many
newspapers and that I have taken all politicians to task at one time or
another. I have been very critical of the President and the Government
and have never shied away from asking the relevant question at the
relevant time. I have taken issue with the President and the Government
on a wide range of issues: corruption, tweaking legal instruments for
political benefit and other reasons of expedience, non-investigation
and/or foot-dragging when citizens, especially journalists have been
attacked, refusal to address issues of good governance and
constitutional flaws and manifest sloth in addressing once and for all
the ‘core issues’ pertaining to minority grievances, namely the veracity
or otherwise of the traditional homeland claim and consequently the
logic or otherwise of devolution in terms of history, geography and
demography.
I can understand people not wanting to vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa
because no one is ever fully happy with the status quo. For example,
those who were held hostage by the LTTE and barely surviving on a cup of
kunji per day were ‘unhappy’ when they got three full meals a day, were
assured of security, had access to health services and medicines, were
able to see their children attend school instead of being trained to
become terrorists, etc. What I can’t understand is why anyone would see
Sarath Fonseka as a better choice. I mean, I can understand someone
wanting ‘change’. However, one would expect ‘change-want’ to have a
direction that is not regressive and a deferment towards those who
foisted a war on our society and backed terrorists to the hilt and
indeed paved the way for a suicide bomber to almost take Fonseka’s life!
I am sorry that I can’t understand that kind of logic. I am so sorry
that I will continue to write about the deep contradictions in the
Fonseka camp even as I advocate that those who want ‘change’ keep things
real and not get carried away by rhetoric and empty promises.
So let me start with a quote that made me smile this morning: ‘When
people are mad they see various dreams and this politician has seen such
a dream where over 600 soldiers are being killed by the LTTE. According
to his figures, if there are 600 deaths, there may be over 2,000
casualties. Then all the hospitals, cemeteries and funeral parlours will
be full. He would have imagined this and celebrating this. He thinks
that people of this country are fools to believe his dreams. He must be
working on a contract given by the LTTE and the anti-war people in the
South who want to see the Army losing the war and the LTTE winning it.
He may be on a contract to discourage people who support us to defeat
the LTTE. I challenge him, if he really wants to become more popular, he
can achieve that by stitching more dresses.’
Who is saying this and who is he/she talking about? Get your smiles
ready, ladies and gentlemen: this is Sarath Fonseka talking about
Mangala Samaraweera in an interview with the Sunday Observer of December
7, 2008. If you want to check the web version, go to http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2008/12/07/sec04.asp.
Perhaps it is because Fonseka has spent some forty years in the Army
that he seems to have very little understanding of things outside the
military equation.
This is why he is appearing like rae daniyel dawal migel kind of
creature. When he was Army Commander and later Chief of Defence Staff,
he was worried about the 10,000 LTTE cadres he believed were in IDP
camps. Today he wants them all released. Back then, he saw Mangala and
Co for who they were, out and out traitors, today he is happy playing
mannequin to Mangala’s creative urges.
He is so much at sea in this field that he does not understand that
he can’t say he is Mr. Clean or Mr. Saint when a) he has been involved
in shady deals, b) has not had an unblemished record in the Army, having
been issued severe warnings for misconduct, especially with regard to
misdemeanours concerning a woman, c) he vacillates on promise (with
respect to the Executive Presidency and its abolition), d) he suddenly
falls in love with those he once castigated for being guilty of treason
and e) he is quite comfortable with the fact that his new found friends
have themselves a shoddy record when it comes to mismanagement, theft,
abuse of state resources and complicity in the Eelam/LTTE project.
Let’s play with Mangala a bit. Take the VAT scam. The Sunday Leader,
a newspaper which according to Frederica Jansz has taken a decision to
support Fonseka and therefore can be considered the flag-bearing rag of
that campaign, has clearly indicated that Mangala Samaraweera was
implicated in this shady affair. Not just Mangala but even Mayantha
Dissanayake, son of Gamini Dissanayake and a recent recruit to bolster
the flagging campaign of the ‘war hero’ whose medals have lost their
lustre, has been flagged by the Sunday Leader among the ‘culpable’. I am
including the web link; click on it, copy and save the screen before the
management of the newspaper removes it from the archives (as it has done
in the case of many web pages that would have damaged Fonseka): http://www.thesundayleader.lk/archive/20060402/spotlight.htm.
To be continued
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