Political prisoners or prisoners in politics..?

Ranil Wickremesinghe has revived his call for the UNP rank and file to commit itself to action towards the release of Sarath Fonseka who, according to Ranil, ‘symbolizes political prisoners in contemporary Sri Lanka’.

By this call Ranil is implying that there are quite a few political prisoners in Sri Lanka and Fonseka is only one among those. The irony here however is that Ranil fails to mention who the other political prisoners are but he nevertheless gets his message across to his masters in the West that there is no freedom to do politics in Sri Lanka, corroborating with impression the West has formed about the country.

This is at a time that when the whole of Sri Lanka, or at least a good majority of the Sri Lankans, are aware that this accusations on ‘human rights violations in the country’ by the West is misplaced at best and due to inherent political prejudice at worst.

Violating human rights

Thus, by making statements that subscribe to such questionable impressions Ranil is pushing himself further into the abyss of his political unpopularity in the eyes of the Sri Lankan majority. Ranil, as we know him, always makes things worse for himself and politically he is beyond redemption even if the average UNPer would want to help him.

Now we come to the question of the incarceration of Fonseka with regard to his status, whether it is political or otherwise. Well, Sarath Fonseka is not being sentenced to prison for his political activity but rather for his role in levelling unfounded allegations against the country’s legitimate forces for violating human rights with his white flag story. This is treason and the fact that he was the Army Commander for sometime does not make him earn license to betray the country’s defences.

Now the question is who enacted all this drama of making political naiveté out of the former Army Commander? And for whose political benefit?

We have pointed out before in this columns that Ranil Wickremasinghe has gone on record in the Hanzard of 2008 accusing Fonseka of taking ‘law unto his hands’ as the Army Commander and being the principal character responsible for violating human rights in the country. After having done all that, six months later Ranil makes an about turn in his perceptions and agrees to support Sarath Fonseka to become the Presidential candidate against the incumbent and that too paradoxically to ‘restore democracy in Sri Lanka’.

Political opportunism

Wickremesinghe should know that the people in this country have better memories than he expects them to and that their perceptions are not tainted with political opportunism. What made Ranil support Fonseka, the man according to him who took the ‘law on to his hands and violated human rights’? You do not have to be a professor in politics to find the answer to that question and it is simply because he thought that Fonseka, with claims in the war victory, would be an ideal foil, than him who opposed the war, to beat the incumbent at the election. Thus Fonseka who was a ‘violator of human rights’ was transformed to be the guardian angel of democracy merely because Fonseka changed his political loyalties, from pro-Mahinda to anti Mahinda.

This goes to prove that in Ranil’s perception is that a man is bad only because he supports the government and he is good only when he is anti government. This is nothing but 100 percent politically motivated thinking sans ethics and principles.

UNP leader

Ranil after having lured Fonseka to save his skin (of salvaging his leadership by not losing for the third time) now finds Fonseka in political quicksand. This is to be expected because Fonseka all his life knew only how the bullets worked and not how the ballets worked.

Thus Ranil in his attempt to survive as the UNP leader ensnared Fonseka and his decision to back Fonseka was down right political chicanery with no thoughts on country and democracy. After all that, could Ranil now stand his ground and accuse the government of ‘political motivation’ in the Fonseka affair.

Ranil is a leader who has not fathomed the political maturity of his polity. Not having been able to fool all the people at least once in his lifetime Ranil with every successive politically opportunistic trick is continuing to fool only to an increasingly shrinking brand of political supporters.

[email protected]