General Sarath Fonseka has resigned, he is not going to work on his yard after retiring, he will be running for president. I predicted this first.
Gen Fonseka’s candidacy looked daunting at the first place and the UPFA supports started panicking and acting irrationally, but at the same time the weaknesses of gen Fonseka’s candidacy started to appear. It’s been several weeks after the first clear indication of this situation, by now it is very clear that Gen Fonseka cannot win, and he joining the UNA gives UPFA a chance to capture more than 2/3rd of the parliament.
Let’s analyze. To win Gen Fonseka need 50% of the Sinhalese votes and the majority of the minority votes, or majority of Sinhalese votes and a substantial minority vote. He cannot do either.
Gen. Fonseka’s candidacy has shown no signs of inspiring and stimulating the Sinhala Buddhist masses. Long months of attempts by UNP supports hidden anonymously behind web sites and face book to generate sympathy towards Gen Fonseka for being "mistreated" by President Rajapaksha and to rally the masses around him have fallen flat.
After all these months of campaigning none of the Sinhala Buddhist leaders elected or not, has appealed to the president to satisfy Gen Fonseka or publicly condemned the President and supported the Gen. No laymen has risen to support Gen. Fonseka except for anonymous UNPers hiding in laymen cloths.
To the contrary the public and Sinhala Buddhist leaders have appealed the Gen. not to run. Currently the UPFA’s approval is around 60%, and it’s safe to assume that the President’s approval is hovering above 75% might be less among minorities but probably higher among Sinhalese. After all according to study, Sri Lankans were the most satisfied people in the whole Asia, couple of months ago, nothing dramatic happened between then and now to erode the President’s popularity.
It is true that Gen Fonseka is very popular among Sinhalese probably more than the president, but the President is not unpopular there is no feeling of anarchy or hopelessness that causing people to look for an alternative leader. The people are happy with the Presidents performance so there is no momentum away from the president to rally people around Fonseka.
The UNP and JVP media tried to build a case that the Gen is being mistreated, appealed the masses to protect him, brought a bill to parliament to give security to retired service personnel their whole life and tried to win the sympathy toward the Gen and rally the masses around him.
As pointed above the public has seen through these attempts and has responded negatively towards them.
The presidential election will be held very soon, probably in January, If Gen Fonseka was going to win the majority or even 50% of the Sinhala voter base we should have seen the momentum building when his name was announced , he cannot slowly bleed the popularity of the President there is no time for that. He won’t get 50% of Sinhala votes, not even a significant percentage.
There is how ever a third scenario, where the Gen. gets a huge majority of the minority vote and a significant percentage of Sinhala votes.
It’s hard to see this happening. Minority people in the eastern province seems to be happy with their representatives and the boom of developments they are experiencing, it’s going to be at best a 50-50 split.
After the LTTE is gone, Tamil people in the north are free to vote according to their thoughts. TNA won’t be able to dictate then how to vote. There are many LTTE sympathizers still with them they won’t vote for either candidate, therefore there will be extremely low voter turnout in the Northern province just like during Jaffna municipality election and how ever the way this number split it won’t be able to propel the Gen Past President Rajapaksha.
The UNA is sure to adopt this strategy to win a vast majority of minority votes, if the Sinhalese sense that the Gen has adopted the age old “Kappam” politics of UNP even the few supporters around him will abandon him.
It is clear when the president’s popularity is high, and the people are satisfied with the situation, there won’t be a momentum to rally the majority around an opposing candidate however popular that person is.
Apart from this disadvantage there are factors that will repell people away from the Gen.
The major reason is who is friends are. He will be the UNA candidate and Ranil, Mangala, Hakeem and may be the JVP will be calling shots. We see even when inviting the Gen for candidacy they impose conditions on him. This is a ridiculous situation; it is the invitee who imposes conditions not the inviter. The UNP, JVP opposition’s popularity has been plummeting they have lost election after an election, they public does not like them, and further more there people were Gen Fonseka’s worst critics during the war. When the public see that Gen Fonseka is a puppet of UNA-JVP they will abandon him.
In the above mentioned context, where President Rajapaksha is very popular, when Gen Fonseka declares his candidacy against the president, people will ask why? We can see some of the reasons in his resignation letter; most reasons are old political jargon of waste, corruption and fraud. He has also mentioned that he was mistreated, when the public gets time to digest this they will see through it and understand that the Gen. is running because of personal vendettas and personal ambitions that will further repel the public.
The Gen. has a clean record because there is nothing on his record except for the war victory, but won’t be for much long. There are many rumors about how arrogant he is, and how that has lead to many operational blunders costing many young lives unnecessarily, about his harsh style of leadership and many ghastly accusations. Looks like they won’t be rumors anymore, war heroes , holding ranks parallel to his own will be publicly testifying against him. That will take a terrible toll on his popularity.
Ability to be a rallying speaker is a must for politicians, Gen Fonseka is not, he is a very bad speaker, even if his campaign was on solid grounds if he cannot articulate his position in front of public or TV people won’t listen to him.
The last factor would be a Kappam politics pointed out before, UNA is sure to engage in Kappam politics with extremist minority parties like Rauff Hakeem’s congress, TNA and Mano Ganeshans party, this will be another factor to turn people away from the Gen.’s campaign.
Public personnel like Gen Fonseka enjoy popularity being cocooned from public and releasing only their success stories to the public. As soon as they declare their candidacy for elected office they loose the public service cocoon and their popularity start to plummet.
So far after months of showing his intentions to run for president Gen. Fonseka has not been able to attract a single Rajapaksha supporter, now he has resigned and allied with UNA-JVP the other factors mentioned here will start to act. As shown above all those factors will work for his disadvantage , there seems to be no political factor that might work for his advantage that is why he is sure to lose by a record margin.
Gen Fonseka’s candidacy looked daunting at the first place and the UPFA supports started panicking and acting irrationally, but at the same time the weaknesses of gen Fonseka’s candidacy started to appear. It’s been several weeks after the first clear indication of this situation, by now it is very clear that Gen Fonseka cannot win, and he joining the UNA gives UPFA a chance to capture more than 2/3rd of the parliament.
Let’s analyze. To win Gen Fonseka need 50% of the Sinhalese votes and the majority of the minority votes, or majority of Sinhalese votes and a substantial minority vote. He cannot do either.
Gen. Fonseka’s candidacy has shown no signs of inspiring and stimulating the Sinhala Buddhist masses. Long months of attempts by UNP supports hidden anonymously behind web sites and face book to generate sympathy towards Gen Fonseka for being "mistreated" by President Rajapaksha and to rally the masses around him have fallen flat.
After all these months of campaigning none of the Sinhala Buddhist leaders elected or not, has appealed to the president to satisfy Gen Fonseka or publicly condemned the President and supported the Gen. No laymen has risen to support Gen. Fonseka except for anonymous UNPers hiding in laymen cloths.
To the contrary the public and Sinhala Buddhist leaders have appealed the Gen. not to run. Currently the UPFA’s approval is around 60%, and it’s safe to assume that the President’s approval is hovering above 75% might be less among minorities but probably higher among Sinhalese. After all according to study, Sri Lankans were the most satisfied people in the whole Asia, couple of months ago, nothing dramatic happened between then and now to erode the President’s popularity.
It is true that Gen Fonseka is very popular among Sinhalese probably more than the president, but the President is not unpopular there is no feeling of anarchy or hopelessness that causing people to look for an alternative leader. The people are happy with the Presidents performance so there is no momentum away from the president to rally people around Fonseka.
The UNP and JVP media tried to build a case that the Gen is being mistreated, appealed the masses to protect him, brought a bill to parliament to give security to retired service personnel their whole life and tried to win the sympathy toward the Gen and rally the masses around him.
As pointed above the public has seen through these attempts and has responded negatively towards them.
The presidential election will be held very soon, probably in January, If Gen Fonseka was going to win the majority or even 50% of the Sinhala voter base we should have seen the momentum building when his name was announced , he cannot slowly bleed the popularity of the President there is no time for that. He won’t get 50% of Sinhala votes, not even a significant percentage.
There is how ever a third scenario, where the Gen. gets a huge majority of the minority vote and a significant percentage of Sinhala votes.
It’s hard to see this happening. Minority people in the eastern province seems to be happy with their representatives and the boom of developments they are experiencing, it’s going to be at best a 50-50 split.
After the LTTE is gone, Tamil people in the north are free to vote according to their thoughts. TNA won’t be able to dictate then how to vote. There are many LTTE sympathizers still with them they won’t vote for either candidate, therefore there will be extremely low voter turnout in the Northern province just like during Jaffna municipality election and how ever the way this number split it won’t be able to propel the Gen Past President Rajapaksha.
The UNA is sure to adopt this strategy to win a vast majority of minority votes, if the Sinhalese sense that the Gen has adopted the age old “Kappam” politics of UNP even the few supporters around him will abandon him.
It is clear when the president’s popularity is high, and the people are satisfied with the situation, there won’t be a momentum to rally the majority around an opposing candidate however popular that person is.
Apart from this disadvantage there are factors that will repell people away from the Gen.
The major reason is who is friends are. He will be the UNA candidate and Ranil, Mangala, Hakeem and may be the JVP will be calling shots. We see even when inviting the Gen for candidacy they impose conditions on him. This is a ridiculous situation; it is the invitee who imposes conditions not the inviter. The UNP, JVP opposition’s popularity has been plummeting they have lost election after an election, they public does not like them, and further more there people were Gen Fonseka’s worst critics during the war. When the public see that Gen Fonseka is a puppet of UNA-JVP they will abandon him.
In the above mentioned context, where President Rajapaksha is very popular, when Gen Fonseka declares his candidacy against the president, people will ask why? We can see some of the reasons in his resignation letter; most reasons are old political jargon of waste, corruption and fraud. He has also mentioned that he was mistreated, when the public gets time to digest this they will see through it and understand that the Gen. is running because of personal vendettas and personal ambitions that will further repel the public.
The Gen. has a clean record because there is nothing on his record except for the war victory, but won’t be for much long. There are many rumors about how arrogant he is, and how that has lead to many operational blunders costing many young lives unnecessarily, about his harsh style of leadership and many ghastly accusations. Looks like they won’t be rumors anymore, war heroes , holding ranks parallel to his own will be publicly testifying against him. That will take a terrible toll on his popularity.
Ability to be a rallying speaker is a must for politicians, Gen Fonseka is not, he is a very bad speaker, even if his campaign was on solid grounds if he cannot articulate his position in front of public or TV people won’t listen to him.
The last factor would be a Kappam politics pointed out before, UNA is sure to engage in Kappam politics with extremist minority parties like Rauff Hakeem’s congress, TNA and Mano Ganeshans party, this will be another factor to turn people away from the Gen.’s campaign.
Public personnel like Gen Fonseka enjoy popularity being cocooned from public and releasing only their success stories to the public. As soon as they declare their candidacy for elected office they loose the public service cocoon and their popularity start to plummet.
So far after months of showing his intentions to run for president Gen. Fonseka has not been able to attract a single Rajapaksha supporter, now he has resigned and allied with UNA-JVP the other factors mentioned here will start to act. As shown above all those factors will work for his disadvantage , there seems to be no political factor that might work for his advantage that is why he is sure to lose by a record margin.
wrong wromg wrong
ReplyDeleteDear Desshapaluwa:
ReplyDeleteMR. President your popularity does not belong to you. It belongs to the People.
It is essential that the President bear in his mind that his popularity is not his; it belongs to people. Therefore people are at liberty to dwindle it for whatever reason they can think of and President cannot question it. People are even entitled to flock to the other side to take revenge even if that itself is a grave error.
In such a situation President should ask himself what wrongs I have done. He cannot take people for granted. Power and popularity are momentary illusions. He cannot think whatever I do I am immune to the wrath of people since I united the country. This kind of attitude is the worst betrayal of the country and sacrifices made by our armed forces and people. "I have united the country so they owe me." This is purely CBK type thinking. "I am the Queen and they must worship even if I happen to be a drunken with out any morals."
After the war it seems like that the President has taken things for granted. Anarkali is one example of them. I appreciate Mr. Gotabhya Rajapaksha's and Mr. Basil Rajapkhas's involvement in the Government. They are assets. However, popping up of his relatives in every little corner is despicable. Foreign policy is another concern. Among many positive things in the foreign policy sphere there are careless and reckless acts such as inviting military dictators. Relationships can be maintained without being seen as glorifying brutality. Can we condemn one brute and party with another?
Having said that now I would like to comment on Mr. Fonseka's affair. Mr. Fonseka was seen as having political ambitions even at the height of the conflict. He made some political comments. For example, he stated that Sri Lanka belonged only to Sinhalese. At that time, the President would have felt the need of removing him. Regardless how heroic or instrumental they are in war against brutal forces like LTTE Army Generals cannot express political views in public forums. When they do civilian rulers cannot look in the other way. The reason that the President did not act at this particular instance might have been that he did not want to rock the boat at the wrong time. The General was making unnecessary comments belittling the Navy and Air Force. We all know how instrumental the army was in the victory against the LTTE but his claim of 95% showed his total callousness and arrogance and egotistic mind setup. (To be continued)
His ganging up with Mr. RW and Mr. Samaraweera clan verifies his cynical mental set up. If he were innocent then he would have retired and stayed away from politics at least for a while rather than pairing up with the enemies of the Nation. Humanistic and democratic views are one thing and using them to achieve ulterior motives is another thing. General should know that it is not possible for the Government to immediately release refugees. The Government has given a time frame. What I observe is that even though this time frame fledge may not be exactly fulfilled there are good efforts to honour it. I do not mind if people campaign for the welfare of the refugees. We all must to do so and encourage the Government to expedite the process without compromising national security but this should not be allowed to be a pretext for LTTE agents.
ReplyDeleteHow did his letter of resignation end up in LNW? Either he leaked it or the Government did it. It is highly unlikely that LNW is a part of a cynical government scheme. It is more likely that the general is a close associate of LNW. Consider the email circulated by LNW which was later disowned by the General. Are these mere coincidences?
I think any civilian ruler who suspects a military coup-due to audacity of the military personnel (whether it is not proven- when it is proven that may be too late) needs to act vigilantly, judiciously and quickly. The President has done just that. He did not imprison the man. Given that he was capable of lining up with RW and Samaraweera we can deduce how dangerous he could be and understand duplicity of his aspirations. I think he could be more dangerous than RW and Mangala clan. The President, if he is in proper mind, cannot take any risk. If these were just rumours, as a military commander he should have taken a step backward understanding that he had crossed the line but he did not; instead he marched forward in the reverse gear. This shows what his real intentions are. I may be wrong and I earnestly wish I were wrong but I am glad that no chances were taken.
One part of us is nostalgic that this is all but a dream played out by the Government and the General to fool the Opposition. This is much more vicious than that. This is a conspiracy hatched by the General, Opposition and Foreign agents against the Nation of Sri Lanka. Again I hope that I am wrong.
If the security of the General is removed, even an iota, it tells me that the President himself acts against the Nation by providing political weapons to the enemies of the Nation.
Finally if any thing happens to Mother Lanka-If RW or his agents and associates come to power at this juncture, then I think that History will judge even the President as a traitor. If he loves Sri Lanka then he should not be reacting to Mangala. For example consider putting Anarkali on the Government ticket to counter an anticipated move by Mangla to put her on the UNP ticket. People have not elected him to engage in these silly games. Is the President obsessed with Mangala? The President needs to govern for the Nation realising that he has a historical opportunity to make Sri Lanka a better place. He himself made the best opportunity out of the worst pending scenario. Why waste it now? Why act like CBK? (Concluded)
Thanks!
Swarnajith Udana
good post
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI often fascinated by how smart people are analyzing and predicting politics. Especially to the advantage of the person or persons they support. I wish our Meterological Department have same capacity predicting our daily weather. But unfortunately after all the high-tech equipments such as satellites and floating balloons and expensive training, they fail to tell me when to take my umbrella to work. But I must admit prediction is a fun business. I don’t think General going to win either. But the idea, somehow he failed as a candidate because he may lose the election and even should not contest because he may not win it, is a ludicrous idea, at least to me. I know every person who telling General not to contest in the election do that in pure love for the man. They don’t want him to lose his popularity, so in his old life he can participate in Temple opening or evening radio talk shows gracefully. But I have to admit, I do not care for the man that much and I want him to contest because I can’t think of any other opposition candidate anyway. If Mahinda is invincible, and if we only vote for the person who definite to win, then we should call off elections, voting, democracy and all that nonsense all together. General not been the president at the end of election, do not undermine his involvement as a candidate in the little process call democracy which we in desperate need of.
ReplyDeleteUseful blog. Keep it up!
ReplyDeleteRegards!
SEMINAKEDGIRLS team