Recovering the ‘national hero’ tag: Options for Sarath Fonseka

‘If Mahinda Rajapaksa had been asked about Sarath Fonseka, when the retired Army Commander decided to contest the Presidential election, what would he have said?’ I wondered recently. I thought that he would or rather he should respond in the following manner.

“I appointed him as the Army Commander in my capacity as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. I had confidence in his ability to carry out a certain specific task. He didn’t fail me. He played an important role in vanquishing the LTTE. He is a war hero. A national hero.

“He has now decided to try his hand at politics. He has every right to do so. As a politician he will be assessed not only on his track record during the time he was Army Commander but from the moment he joined the Army. He will be assessed for the statements he makes, for agreements he comes into with various parties and individuals; he will be assessed for what he says and what he does not say, for his statements and retractions; he will be assessed for the company he chooses to keep, his new found friends, what they have done and haven’t done, their contribution to this nation and whether or not they helped the enemies of the people.

“I have no doubt that I will win on January 26. I have to make this request in all seriousness from my people. On January 27, I want you to think of Sarath Fonseka not as another politician. I want you to remember him as the man who led our troops, our Army Commander, as a war hero and a national hero. I want you to remember him not for what has happened in the past few months but for what he accomplished for the nation in the past three years. He was my Army Commander. He was a hero. He is a hero and will always be remembered as a hero.”

No one asked Mahinda Rajapaksa what he thought of Fonseka and neither did the President venture to describe his principal opponent in any great detail. I don’t know how he would have either had he been pushed to do so. We know, however, what Mahinda Rajapaksa had told Fonseka when the latter paid him the last courtesy call prior to retirement: ‘All the best Sarath. I think you are making a mistake. I will win on January 26. You will find that politics is an unforgiving business and that when you lose, you lose everything. You will only have your family. When this happens, you come to me. I will help you.’

Election campaigns are bitter affairs and sometimes the bad taste refuses to leave the tongue. I don’t know what Mahinda Rajapaksa would do if Fonseka actually took him up on the offer.

Given that Fonseka has made no bones about what and what he would do to the Rajapaksas in the event he became President as well as stories about summary execution, one would hardly fault Mahinda Rajapaksa if he borrowed some of Fonseka’s own words to talk about the man.

On the other hand, just like one expects Fonseka to Fonseka, one also expects Mahinda to be Mahinda and if the former can swallow his pride then it is likely that the latter would not hesitate to shake his hand. All this is conjecture and at a certain level fantasizing beyond the reasonable. Let us get back to terra firma.

On January 27, 2009, Sarath Fonseka was no longer ex Army Commander. He was no longer ‘Candidate with a good chance’ (that’s inflation, of course, but let’s go with it). He was ‘losing candidate’.

He cut a lonely figure as one by one his main backers dropped off the stage and one by one the cameras were shut off and journalists went in search of things more newsworthy. This is what a loser gets; he/she is rudely accosted by his/her primordial condition of being: Solitude.

Fonseka panicked and this was clear when he holed himself up in a hotel and started spewing all kinds of wild assertions about the election. He said that he was heading for victory by margins exceeding 100,000 in several districts. Anyone who has any sense of electoral temper would acknowledge immediately that Fonseka was way off the mark. Mahinda won with a majority exceeding 1.8 million votes. Fraud of that magnitude is impossible and whatever infringements there could have been (and in this the Fonseka camp is not blameless either) would not have altered the final outcome.

What was most disappointing in that election-aftermath drama that Fonseka scripted was his irresponsible and dangerous call to foreign governments: ‘they must intervene, they must interfere,’ he said (check the interview given to NewsX on youtube).

He used the word ‘interfere’. That’s not being patriotic. He was not calling his supporters to take to the streets to defend his assertion. His immediate thoughts were ‘foreign governments’ and ‘interference’. It ought to worry those who voted for him and perhaps even make them glad that he lost in the end.

It has been alleged that he contested in the first place out of a psychopathic need to exact revenge from Gotabhaya and Mahinda for perceived wrongs done him. He certainly fed that notion with his invective, outrageous allegations and a deplorable reluctance to acknowledge all that they had done for him.

The words ‘reiterate’ or ‘recall’ might work too, given earlier statements issued by him about the President and the Defence Secretary. What is worrying is that if he is a man who can hold a grudge for years and decades (as has been the case with former Navy Commander, Admiral Wasantha Karannagoda).

Today he could be in a situation where he blames and therefore needs to exact revenge from the voter. This is why the very cosy relationships he has cultivated with certain diplomats ought to worry every citizen and of course the Government. The man, we know, is a loose-cannon and quite capable of being the ‘going devil’ as per that fine Sinhala saying, ‘yana yaka korahath bindagenai yanne’ (the devil that has to leave makes sure he smashes things as he leaves).

There is a post-election role for Sarath Fonseka and for his own good he has to choose roads that take him away from bitterness, hatred and anger. He has to divest his mind of vengeful thoughts. Being Sarath Fonseka on January 29, 2010 cannot be easy. He can take comfort from the fact that 4 million people or 40 percent of the voting population placed their faith in him. He decided to contest. That alone was brave.

That he did not win is not a slur on his character or ability. There are lots of positives he can take. He doesn’t have to be like the yana yaka. Those who voted for him would not want him to do that or be like that. Perhaps he was not made for politics and if this were the case, he can at any point choose to leave that despicable battleground and pick another location for social engagement if he so wishes.

He will be applauded, I am sure. Let us hope that sanity prevails so that he can once again be remembered as the national hero he was before this sad and in the end damaging adventure.

[email protected]