BBC/VoA and manipulation of, by and for Sarath Fonseka
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha, MP
I have long had a soft corner for Charles Havilland, the local BBC
Correspondent. Indeed, as Marlow said of Lord Jim, have I not stood up
for him, when Sri Lankans to whom one white reporter is just like
another thought the BBC and Channel 4 were identical? I have argued,
quite often recently, that the BBC (though not its rather strange
Sinhala Service, with its conglomeration of old fashioned leftists)
tries to be objective in its coverage of Sri Lanka, without succumbing
to the temptation to stereotype.
I was saddened therefore to find in a report on the verdict on the
Sarath Fonseka case that the BBC referred to him as Mahinda Rajapaksa’s
‘Ideological soulmate’. This was stereotyping with a vengeance, whereas
the Voice of America, which I have always thought more simplistic,
actually referred to Fonseka falling out with the President over
differences as to political ideology.
Nationalist ideologue
Anyone looking at the evidence, not least that provided by Fonseka
himself, in his letter of resignation, would realize that the latter was
a more plausible interpretation.
![](z_p05-BBC1.jpg)
Barack Obama |
![](z_p05-BBC2.jpg)
Robert Blake |
Fonseka referred to the President’s rejection of his proposal to
expand the army, and also criticized him for too swift resettlement of
the displaced. To assume then that one Sri Lankan nationalist is
identical with another seemed totally unworthy of the BBC.
I suppose it is a mark of how little interest there is really in Sri
Lanka that no one has bothered to explore the implications of the
differences between the two, and more particularly the divergence
between what Fonseka was advocating for a few months after the war
ended, and the position he took up later. Not only his interview with
Federica Jansz (whether or not one believes him or her as to what he
actually said with regard to the White Flag Case), but also the persona
Patricia Butenis seemed optimistic about according to Wikileaks,
suggests a 180 degree turn from the chauvinist rather than nationalist
ideologue who fell out with the President.
More surprisingly, no one drew attention to the elephant in the room,
which somehow never found its way into the courthouse either, namely
Sarath Fonseka’s claim in Ambalangoda just a couple of months after the
war ended that he had resisted instructions to accept the surrender of
people carrying white flags. This was to my mind the most worrying
allegation that was recorded in the State Department Report that was
conveyed to us around October 2009.
Final phase
I suggested then that we answer that report promptly, as had very
politely been requested by the Americans, and I believe we would have
saved ourselves a great deal of trouble had that been done. But the
panel the President appointed delayed meeting, and the report was
overtaken by events, not least Sarath Fonseka’s candidacy and his very
different interpretation, according to Federica, of what happened in the
White Flag case.
The language he is supposed to have used in July is most interesting.
In the web report about the Ambalangoda speech to which the Americans
referred, he was quoted as saying ‘I managed the war like a true
soldier. I did not make decisions from A/C rooms. I was under pressure
to stop the war even during the final phase. I got messages not to shoot
those who are carrying white flags. A war is fought by soldiers.
They do so by putting their lives on the line. Therefore, the
decisions about war should be taken by the soldiers in the battlefront.
Not the people in A/C rooms in Colombo. Our soldiers have seen in life
the kind of destruction carried out by those people before they decided
to come carrying a white flag. Therefore, they carried out their duties.
We destroyed any one connected with the LTTE. That is how we won the
war,’ Fonseka said at an event held in Ambalangoda to felicitate him on
July 10.’
Darusman Report
This has however been ignored subsequently, most notoriously by the
Darusman Report, even though it shows itself well acquainted with the
State Department report otherwise. Of course it could be claimed that
the West was only following Sri Lanka in this regard, since we too seem
to have forgotten that earlier claim. But, given that Western
journalists do not follow a Sri Lankan lead in other respects, I think
there is another reason for their deafening silence.
Quite simply, had they noted that earlier claim, the question must
have arisen as to why Fonseka changed so much.
Apply pressure
The man who had been pushing a supremacist ideology earlier, with
longer detention for the displaced, had now turned into the great
rescuer of the oppressed. Far from ignoring orders from air conditioned
rooms to spare surrendees, Fonseka was now presenting himself as an
innocent abroad, as compared to terrible war criminals.
It was an extraordinary performance, and as we know it backfired
terribly, so that Fonseka promptly withdrew the claim (or claimed to
have done so, though Federica declared that he ‘never showed any
enthusiasm for the denial always admitting that he had said what he had
said’).
Why then had he got into all this? It could not have been only that
Federica, who seems to have decided to support him simply out of
animosity for the Rajapaksas but who needed to claim that he was the
ideologically softer candidate, had pushed him into this embarrassing
position.
On the contrary, Fonseka himself was angling for such a
characterization, for he had realized that that was his only hope of
success. So he moved on to the wooing too of the TNA, which seems to
have been taken in, surprisingly, given what a wily old bird Sambandan
normally is.
But the Americans seem to have been taken in too, if Wikileaks is
anything to go by. That is the charitable position, and ignores the view
that they were responsible for the conversion of Fonseka in the first
place to an unconvincing saintliness. Indeed, even if they were
responsible, I would argue that Robert Blake certainly would not have
been taken in, but would rather have thought this a useful tool with
which to apply pressure on the government. But sadly, not everyone is as
intelligent as Robert Blake, and perhaps there were those who really
thought that Christmas had come, and Fonseka as President would dish out
all sorts of goodies to President Obama and Ranil Wickremesinghe as well
as to the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam or whoever was flavour
of the month at the time.
The BBC I had always thought to be much wiser. Not Charles, but his
counterpart in Delhi, had Fonseka squarely in sight, when he told me
that, had Fonseka won the election, it was not the Rajapaksas who would
have had to fear being killed, but rather Ranil.
Ranil I think had begun to suspect something of the sort. But in the
strange game of double bluff that Ranil and Fonseka and the TNA and
their Western adulators were playing, everyone would also have been
taking out insurance.
If the West thought Fonseka as President would hand over power to
Ranil as Prime Minister, they would have had ways of convincing him to
do the gentlemanly thing if he were proving recalcitrant - but if Ranil
were out of the way, that strategy would not work.
Reconciliation
It was strange then finding young Charles reiterating the old story
that the President and Sarath Fonseka were ideological soulmates. This
is perhaps the BBC’s way of affirming its conviction that, even when
Federica and the TNA were supporting him, he had not changed his spots.
But it is sad that they have to drag the President into all this.
In that respect the very different perspective presented by the Voice
of America suggests I hope that the Americans are now older and wiser.
It is of course conceivable that they are potty enough to continue to
think that Fonseka was the best hope for reconciliation and pluralism.
I suspect that is too much for even American naivete, or idealism, or
whatever you choose to call it, though that is a quality I have learned
never to underestimate. But I would hope that they have finally realized
that, charming though they may once have thought him, the ideology that
the country actually voted for is preferable.
Working harmoniously with that, building on its strengths, the rapid
resettlement, the swift rehabilitation of former cadres, the intense
programme of development in the North, would make more sense, because
that would be the best way of helping to overcome any weaknesses,
instead of using the man who took pride, according to the Report they
wanted investigated, in destroying ‘anyone connected with the LTTE’. |