Though the wily politician has outsmarted the war horse in the battle of democracy, rajapaksa has to handle acute ethnic polarisation. Saurabh Kumar Shahi explores other probable fallouts of the sri lankan polls from Colombo.
Sympathy and an army general do not cut a very feasible combination. However, you can not actually help but sympathise with General Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka. Imagine his plight. Less than six months ago, he was riding on the euphoric wave that erupted following the annihilation of LTTE. He was venerated along with President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The then Indian NSA, in one of those moments where Indians are known to let their tongue and not the mind do the talking, proclaimed he was the best army general operating in the Milky Way. Then Fonseka did what many, who don’t know how to handle veneration, do; he decided to take on the President and his political family in hubris.
Six months later, filing my story from the media centre at the Department of Information Building in Colombo, I can’t help but extend my sympathy. He has lost the election, the veneration and much of his face all in one go. On the sites displaying minute by minute results, comments are pouring in. One T P Ranadheera writes from Pennsylvania, “You lost everything General: serves you right. Come to Pennsylvania with your Green Card; I might help you land a job at some filling station.” Ouch. That should hurt.
The final results are out and the incumbent Rajapaksa has scored a landslide victory, garnering 57.88 per cent of the votes polled. The General has tallied 40.15 per cent. As expected, the incumbent has done marvellously in South and Central South areas where most of his constituent — Sinhalese rural and semi-urban class — resides. Similarly, as expected, Tamils, Muslims and Christians; as well as the urban middle and upper middle class among Sinhalese have solidly been behind Fonseka. The General has won the Northern districts of Jaffna and Vanni as well as Tamil and Muslim-dominated Trincomalee & Batticaloa in the east. He has also managed to win in Mannar, again Muslim-dominated, and Nuwara-Eliya, which has a sizable population of Plantation Tamils (different from Jaffna Tamils).
Sympathy and an army general do not cut a very feasible combination. However, you can not actually help but sympathise with General Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka. Imagine his plight. Less than six months ago, he was riding on the euphoric wave that erupted following the annihilation of LTTE. He was venerated along with President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The then Indian NSA, in one of those moments where Indians are known to let their tongue and not the mind do the talking, proclaimed he was the best army general operating in the Milky Way. Then Fonseka did what many, who don’t know how to handle veneration, do; he decided to take on the President and his political family in hubris.
Six months later, filing my story from the media centre at the Department of Information Building in Colombo, I can’t help but extend my sympathy. He has lost the election, the veneration and much of his face all in one go. On the sites displaying minute by minute results, comments are pouring in. One T P Ranadheera writes from Pennsylvania, “You lost everything General: serves you right. Come to Pennsylvania with your Green Card; I might help you land a job at some filling station.” Ouch. That should hurt.
The final results are out and the incumbent Rajapaksa has scored a landslide victory, garnering 57.88 per cent of the votes polled. The General has tallied 40.15 per cent. As expected, the incumbent has done marvellously in South and Central South areas where most of his constituent — Sinhalese rural and semi-urban class — resides. Similarly, as expected, Tamils, Muslims and Christians; as well as the urban middle and upper middle class among Sinhalese have solidly been behind Fonseka. The General has won the Northern districts of Jaffna and Vanni as well as Tamil and Muslim-dominated Trincomalee & Batticaloa in the east. He has also managed to win in Mannar, again Muslim-dominated, and Nuwara-Eliya, which has a sizable population of Plantation Tamils (different from Jaffna Tamils).
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