Posted on February 25, 2010 by admin

While these scenes were unfolding within the former opposition alliance, a team of lawyers from the UNP and the JVP were silently collating the evidence to challenge the re-election of President Rajapaksa on January 26. It was the UNP`s team of lawyers, viz., Ronald Perera, A.P. Niles and Daya Pelpola who did most of the drafting. The JVP`s lawyer was Sunil Watagala, a former provincial councillor. The final draft was vetted by Wijeyadasa Rajapaksa, PC and papers were filed by the UNP`s instructing attorneys Asoka Samararatna Associates.
Papers filed this week in the Supreme Court call for nullity of the election and recount of the votes, but the thrust of their challenge seems to be on two separate statements made by the President and others saying that Gen. Fonseka had a `secret agreement` with the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and the other being the statement made by some lawyers and by ex-MP Wimal Weerawansa and Broadcasting Corporation Chief Hudson Samarasinghe during the course of the voting period over state media that Fonseka`s candidature was void because he was not a registered voter.
As agents of President Rajapaksa such misleading statements can disqualify their candidate they argue and cite several previous instances including the disqualification of Gamini Dissanayake as MP for Nuwara-Eliya in 1970 and Ananda Kularatne at the 1982 by-election when one of his agents, Basil Rajapaksa, who was then in the UNP had made an incorrect statement against Nirupama Rajapaksa.
In the meantime, ongoing CID investigations into the alleged attempt to overthrow the government, assassinate the President and the material that will unfold before the General Court Martial, has laid bare an important aspect. It has come to light during investigations that Gen. Fonseka had, built an intricate network of retired military officers and soldiers in almost all electorates for political activity in the weeks ahead of the presidential polls. His staff at the office in Rajakeeya Mawatha had been dealing directly with these retired military men instead of working through the machinery of the opposition parties at district and electoral level. UNF leaders are now incensed by the details that are slowly emerging.
The UNF expected Gen. Fonseka to integrate his network to the opposition political structure at the grassroots level. Instead, he was formulating an independent military network of his own with retired personnel. This had been on the advice of retired military officers who were functioning from his office. Thus, if he had won, UNF leaders now say, he would have expected the opposition parties to fall in line with his own network. Though late, some opposition members heave a sigh of relief that this did not happen.
It was an irony that the Government`s position was also this that Fonseka had a network of military personnel, past and present working for him to be the next Commander-in-Chief. Their investigations uncovered more than any individuals especially in the Army supporting their former Commander, groups of serving army officers, even units showing dissension to the Government. While politics in the Army was not something new, this mass-scale politicking purely because of the proximity of his candidacy to his posting as Army Commander was unprecedented.
They point out to soldiers at check-points who were told to vote for Fonseka and say there were three categories, i) those who were serving and openly backed Fonseka, ii) those who surreptitiously did so, and iii) those who were neutral despite pressure from the Fonseka camp.
The fact being that almost every Sri Lankan institution was politicised, and the military had also fallen to this bad practice. There were impressionable young men, some who had served less than two years in the Army, thousands of them in fact, who were getting imbibed with the thought that the military must play in the politics of the country. The Government itself had allowed the JVP entr e into the military apparatus at a time when it wanted to whip up nationalist fervour and whip up morale and recruitment to combat the LTTE.
In the wake of the Presidential Election, as Government leaders were pondering on what to do next with the ex-Army Commander cum Presidential candidate, the Defence Ministry delayed the initial thinking to arrest Fonseka immediately.
Government MPs were asking the President why he was not arresting Gen. Fonseka, and Gen. Fonseka in turn was saying `if I have done anything wrong, why are they not arresting me`. The CID and the SIS were asked to collate the available evidence. This evidence was placed before Attorney General Mohan Peiris for a legal opinion. Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa had opined that it was probably politically bad for the Government to arrest Fonseka. He told the President that `Fonseka is a politically dead man, in no time the people will forget him`. Strengthened by the legal opinion that there was a legal basis to go ahead, President Rajapaksa himself took the decision to do what was best for the well-being of the country, and that decision was to arrest Fonseka and weed out questionable elements from the armed forces and the police.
According to a highly placed Defence Ministry official, the Government opted to do it that way rather than unleash organised pro-Government mobs to a kind of `people`s arrest` of Fonseka. They say that the relative calm around the country after the elections was not because the people were shocked that Fonseka lost, but because the police and reliable army units were on the streets as a damper to public celebrations. In Colombo, the Defence Secretary`s former regiment, Gajaba were on the streets. Fonseka may have misread this calmness, the official added.
Thus General Fonseka, like a pendulum, went from war hero to peace zero. He then swung from zero to political hero after his arrest by military policemen. Now, with new disclosures emerging from CID investigations and his tie-up with the JVP, where he would zero in at the parliamentary polls and thereafter remains the critical question.
The manner in which Fonseka was arrested however triggered off an avalanche of protest from many quarters, both local and foreign. The most significant were the statements by the Buddhist Maha Nayakas (Chief Prelates). They wanted to summon a Sangha Sammelanaya ( Congress of the Clergy) in Kandy for this week (Feb. 18) and expected hundreds of monks to attend the event where the underlining theme was call for the restoration of democracy in Sri Lanka – a direct message to President Rajapaksa.
Instead of making their case out to the Chief Prelates before the call went out, the Government got activated only post-facto, but before the Congress was held. This has now turned out to be another controversy.
UNF leader Ranil Wickremesinghe accused the Government of violating the Constitution by undermining the Mahanayakes. He said the Mahanayakes were told by junior monks in a three hour discussion that they would breakaway from the Malwatta and Asgiriya Chapters and engineer mass defections of monks to the Rohana Parshawaya, an unrecognised sect from the southern province. For good measure he said that the Chief Prelates were threatened.
In the Vinaya (Disciplinary) rules for monks (Mahavagga Pali), the Buddha refers schism in the Sangha (Sangha beda) as one of the 13 such rules. If any monk has committed a violation of any one of these 13 rules he must reveal it in front of the Sangha and undergo some purification.
Invitation letters sent out by the Chief Prelates to monks to attend the Sangha Sammelanaya were held up at the Kandy Post Office without delivery. Soldiers guarding the Chief Prelates were telephoning the Defence Ministry in Colombo and giving a ball-by-ball commentary on what was happening within those holy precincts. With every Sri Lanka institution politicised, and the Government trying to ensure the military was de-politicised, there will no doubt be questions as to how far the Buddha Sasana is being politicised as well.