Karu's lamentations!

UNP Deputy Leader Karu Jayasuriya was reported to have visited former Army Commander and the Presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka recently in jail. Jayasuriya made a press briefing after this visit and in that he was stressing the importance of maintaining law and order, insinuating that the people have lost confidence in law and order in the country today.

The political reality however is that the UNP needs to keep the Fonseka factor alive in its politics because it is the 'Fonseka factor' and the heroism attributed to it that helped the UNP to cover its sinful past of dalliance with the LTTE and its terror. Since Ranil Wickremesinghe acceded to power in the party, the UNP had an official policy of appeasing and legitimizing terror.

Humanitarian operation

In successive manifestos it argued the need to bifurcate the country into ethnic conclaves as the 'only solution' to what the UNP identified as an 'ethnic conflict'. The UNP Government of 2000 to 2003, during its peace talks with the LTTE made four offers of 'devolution' incrementally diluting the power of the Central Government to please Prabhakaran. Those attempts to betray the country finally ended when Prabhakaran showed contempt for the UNP's naivety. The law and order situation in the country would have been anybody's imagination only if Prabhakaran accepted those 'devolutions' requiring the transfer of Land and Police powers to nine petty Chief Ministers in the provinces.

When the present government launched its humanitarian operation, the UNP bemoaned that so much of national wealth and human effort should be committed to a project that the UNP said was an 'exercise in sheer futility'. When Sarath Fonseka was appointed the Army Commander the UNP position was that the Sri Lanka Army under Sarath Fonseka would be reduced to the position of a salvation army in its effectiveness. The UNP accused Fonseka of becoming a law on to himself and attributed all the attacks on journalist to the Army Commander.

Political wisdom

Ranil Wickremesinghe's inference in accusing Sarath Fonseka of the murder of Lasantha Wickremetunge is recorded in the Hanzard. Even when the forces were recording victory after victory the present UNP leadership belittled such victories calling them names. The UNP was waiting for the forces to get routed in Killinochchi, as predicted by Prabhakaran to come out and brag about its political wisdom in not fighting the LTTE. That political wisdom however turned out to be a monumental mistake on the part of the present UNP leadership when the forces finally trounced the LTTE in all its fronts including the propaganda front which was patronized even by the UNP.

After having gone through all that and finally when the UNP was reduced to position where it badly need some cover to hide its political stupidity they engineered another one of those 'political master strokes' to inveigle the heroic but politically immature and egoistic Army Commander to become its Presidential candidate at the election that it had a hope in hell of winning. For 60 years since independence this country had a disciplined and loyal army that was unaffected by the politics of governance.

During the JVP problems in 1971 and 1989 and also for a long period during the LTTE troubles the army proved its metal and its loyalty was never in question although its motivation may have been, under naive political leaderships. Thus the UNP in its quest for power not only made a treacherous turnaround in its policies but also ran the risk of politicizing the Sri Lankan Army. Again the law and order situation in the country would have been anybody's imagination if an Army Commander usurped power in this country soon after the LTTE was vanquished.

Loss of law and order

What is even more interesting was the political front, the UNP formed to capture this elusive political power. They formed an alliance of alienating political ideologies to come to power with Fonseka. Apart from the UNP that had a neo-liberal socio economic policies it had the JVP with its paranoid anti liberalism and then the ITAK which was wanting to take the country back to separatism. It wasn't even clear who would form the Cabinet of Ministers in the event of a Fonseka victory and what would be the collective political outlook of the Fonseka front. Thus it is more than clear to any person with average intelligence that the Fonseka front was a politically negative force and its victory would have brought utter chaos and turmoil to this country. So much for the loss of law and order UNP's Karu Jayasuriya is lamenting about.

Finally, a word about Fonseka's present predicament. It is true that today he is languishing in a prison and that is not a befitting treatment to a man who gave leadership to the army at a crucial time of the country's history. The true position however is that he is not in jail for giving leadership to the army but for what he did after joining the UNP; for attempting to politicize the army with the view of undermining the government elected by the will of the people. Thus it is the UNP's political opportunism and not the government in power that is responsible for Fonseka's present predicament. The present government made a hero out of Fonseka from nowhere, but the UNP in its quest to topple the government caused Fonseka to go to jail.

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