The Fonseka option: Change, small change or short-change?

It is natural for people to have differences of opinion. Some people cannot understand why others would want to vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa. Others, similarly, are appalled that there are people who want to vote for Sarath Fonseka. I am appalled that not many want to vote for someone other than these two candidates.

In the end everyone has one or more reasons for voting for this or that person. More likely, they have good reasons not to vote for this or that person. I am intrigued by these things. I am surprised by the reasons stated for choices made (or in the making). I was thinking of Fonseka and reflecting on what I believe are the wrong reasons to vote for him when I read an article under that very title. Kalana Senaratne had written it for groundviews.org. ‘Voting for Fonseka for all the wrong reasons’ is a must-read.

When anyone says he/she will vote for Fonseka, my first question is, ‘Who did you vote for in 2005?’ The answer is invariably, ‘Ranil Wickremesinghe’ except in the case of the odd JVP sympathizer. I have a follow up question: did you believe in 2005 that the LTTE could be defeated militarily? The answer is invariably, ‘no’. I probe further: ‘Did you at any point in 2006, 2007 and 2008 back our Security Forces to the hilt’? Well, no one wants to say ‘no’, but there emerges this sudden shifty-eyedness, shuffling of feet and general unease.

The truth is I firmly believe there are ‘right’ reasons to vote for Fonseka. And of course there are wrong reasons. What I find amusing is that people who would vote for him, would do so for the ‘right reasons’ but state all the ‘wrong reasons’. Let me explain.

What are the right reasons? Here goes. First of all, if one hates Mahinda Rajapaksa’s face, and wants to see a different face on television and the newspapers, wants to hear another name after the word ‘President’ in the coming years, then of course, yes, it is logical to vote for someone else.

If one is a diehard UNPer longing to taste again that elusive thing called ‘victory’ and believes fervently that Sarath Fonseka is essentially a UNP candidate and will ensure that the President’s House gets a green flag, then by all means, vote for the man and try to elect him. It is not about policy as much as it is about ‘my party’. Legitimate.

If one is a diehard JVP and utterly, utterly blind to the fact that Fonseka if elected will not be wagged by a tiny red tail, and utterly blind to the following facts, then yes, vote for the man: a) The TNA has a pact with Fonseka to re-merge the North and East, b) Fonseka has said he will go with the UNP’s economic policies, c) Fonseka has backtracked on abolishing the executive presidency, d) Fonseka has severely compromised the national interest by careless comments and opened his fellow officers to harassment, e) Fonseka within the limits of his office, has been found guilty of abusing telephone privileges to the tune of million of rupees, perpetrating and facilitating fraud so that his son-in-law can make millions of dollars through inappropriate processing of tender bids, f) Fonseka is uncouth and motivated by vengefulness bordering on a psychopathic condition and g) has had a dubious track record as an officer in terms of breach of discipline including allegations of rape.

These are the logical and right reasons to vote for Fonseka. What are the ‘wrong’ reasons?

First of all, if you are of the opinion that the current regime is corrupt and guilty of nepotism, then Sarath Fonseka is not the alternative. He is corrupt. Beyond a shadow of doubt. If you think his offenses have been ‘petty’ and therefore ‘forgivable’, consider this: the principal of a leading school in Colombo can take bribes but there is a ceiling to the wealth he can thus accumulate in a given year; if he became executive president there is nothing to say that he would not make one cent more through fraudulent means than he did when he was a principal.

Add to this the fact that he is currently bedding with a bunch of crooks that made big bucks while in power and have shown they have no scruples whatsoever (not forgetting that they were aiding and abetting terrorism and separatism). Still think ‘alternative’?

Then there are those who think that Fonseka has offered an alternative in his manifesto. Indi Samarajiva, writing in the Sunday Leader, for instance, tells us ‘I am voting against Mahinda, but I’ve also found real reasons to vote for Sarath’ (his emphasis). He thinks Fonseka’s manifesto is ‘great’. Sorry, he says it sounds great (emphasis mine).

Are we supposed to vote for a wish-list? Well, folks, if that were the case then the candidate who comes up with the most mouth-watering bag of goodies would win hands down! Fonseka’s manifesto is full of ‘I-will’. Even if we were to forget that Fonseka has shown that he has absolutely no clue about the constitution and its Constraints, we can’t put the nation in the hands of an individual who has demonstrated that he is a crook, is vengeful to the extreme and has preferred a guns-in-booty-out kind of operational ethic for over 40 years.

Indi’s piece is full of ‘he is pledging’ and ‘he is promising’. All presidential candidates and indeed all politicians are made of promises and Indi seems to have forgotten this. Fonseka has forgotten that in a post-LTTE Sri Lanka the thrust is a) development, b) development and c) development. There is no coherent development plan that one can obtain from his manifesto.

It is, as I said, a wish list. A bit of industry, a bit of agriculture, some environment, some law and order, some constitutional reform. An A/L student could come up with something more concrete!

I find the I-don’t-like-Mahinda’s-face kind of voter more respectable, frankly. And of course the kepuwath-kola, kepuwath-JVP types. Change? Come on Indi, it is about what-you-see-is-what-you-get in the end. The Fonseka camp, led by Fonseka, has shown itself in its true colours and all the letters in all words used in campaign rhetoric cannot be put together to spell the word ‘change’.

Change is not what Fonseka is about, at least not in the sense that I believe Indi understands ‘change’. No, not even small change. Short-change? Hmm...that’s a distinct possibility.

[email protected]