The JVP and UNP are contesting separately, it seems. UNP will contest as the old UNF, under elephant symbol, while JVP with some other name boards and Sarath Fonseka will contest under the Democratic National Alliance, under Trophy symbol, oh irony.
The Loser's Trophy
So far, UNP seems to have washed its hands off the Fonseka Farce. Even the token protest in front of the Sirikotha with the convenience of party headquarters behind them and Kanora bakeshop in front of them has stopped. They say that the UNP is still not closing their nominations in case Fonseka wants to contest under them, but this just seems to be a token gesture. After all, Anoma Fonseka meets her husband twice daily, and it seems that UNP has no trouble contacting her.
The guy who was touted as the capable honest no nonsense leader allegedly can’t figure out at the moment whether to contest from the capitalist party or the socialist party.
However at the moment, all indications, especially the confidence of the JVP on getting Fonseka on their list, and their continued and UNP’s discontinued enthusiasm for marketing Fonseka seem to say that Fonseka is contesting under the JVP. The only thing that prevents him from the UNP should be his ego and not wanting to contest under Ranil. Anyway, JVP has already started the mud campaign against the UNP.
Whines Continue on Fonseka Arrest
The whines seem to continue about the arrest of Fonseka. Some political genius comes out to point out that Fonseka was not arrested for legal reasons. As if majority wanted him to figure that out.
Anyone who is sane knows that there is some politics behind Fonseka arrest. What those genius analysts don’t seem to see is that Fonseka has been threatening to do exactly the same had he won. Unlike in the previous cases, e.g. Chandrika or Ranil, the bitterness was both high and mutual. And Rajapakse won, so Fonseka ended up in jail. Had Fonseka won, all three brothers would be in jail at best, and Gotabhaya would probably be dead by now.
How much this simple fact is repeated, some intellectual seems to wake up from the dream and call “look! they have put Fonseka in jail! how abominable!!”.
Do these intellectuals deny the simple fact that is mentioned above? No, they have a work around for that — those who praised the dirty alliance directly and indirectly and saw therein rays of sunlight in a night, those who even praised the lack of a policy based agreement as a positive thing, those who wondered why people didn’t treat Fonseka as sapumal kumaraya, now come out and polish the old words such as “tribal”: Oh yeah. Look, we art holier than thou and we also know that Fonseka is, what, Feudal. We were always “intellectual”. We knew the truth, and we even paid lip service to it with claims of voting Wickramabahu etc. We however said how the common people should be seeing things, they are not as smart as us, so they want a more mainstream choice, see. Tribal wars do not interest us, and most of Fonseka supporters, unlike us, love Fonseka for tribal reasons, but here we are, telling them, and those who supported Rajapakse, that it wasn’t the love for the law that Rajapakse put Fonseka in jail. For the moment we’ll conveniently forget that the “ray of sunshine” alliance was up to worse tribal war rules, had they won, and they deserve no sympathy on that.
With this workaround, they even blame Rajapakse 100% for holding the election, because, unless the election was there, Fonseka couldn’t have made a mess out of him and made a mess out of UNP and JVP! This isn’t any different than a guy who rape a prostitute blaming the crime on her provocative dress.
However political the reasons there are, there is also the fact that there are clearly legit reasons to arrest him as well.
At crossroads
It would be interesting in coming weeks to see how the intellectuals struggle to find a common footing. Having been shown that there isn’t many votes that they can steal from the UPFA, the JVP will focus on the UNP vote base. This won’t be taken lightly by the UNP.
On the other hand, they can’t embark on an outright attack on the other, because during the presidential election, they didn’t say publicly that the other will also be put into jail for crimes it committed. For the sake of entertainment, I hope they will figure out a workaround for this. It would be interesting to see how all the self-righteous “democratic” “freedom-loving” “visionary” bloggers comes into terms with the situation.
Looking more carefully, this had to happen this way: the UNP and JVP knew very well that they can’t possibly go far together. Ranil knew it the best of all, and he didn’t miss a second in deciding the “party” wants to contest under elephant. I think as a matter of fact, UNP is not unreasonable on this: unlike a prez election where one candidate gets the limelight, in a general election it’s the party that is important. On the other hand, as always, JVP is trying the cheap semantic “jilmart”, to borrow from Somawansa, that as long as the symbol isn’t the Elephant, UNP is quite fine. We find it fine to ally with the TNA that were terrorist apologists and nothing else, but we can’t fight under the elephant, see. We are that holy.
Entertainment
Apart for petty entertainment value, I think this general election would be a bore, a missed chance to discuss and shape and fine-tune the future course of the country after the LTTE. It is mainly due to the opposition, that didn’t have any convincing policy to sell, that the real important matters went out of the focus and petty bikering and mus slinging became the order of the day: i have written about them here and here. They chose the game, they accepted with their own exploits that cheating and deceiving and media manipulation is accepted norms, and now that they are beaten in the game, there is no point crying foul. There is little time left for some focus before April, but chances are almost nil that this time its gonna be different. Such is the power of denial.
UPDATE:
I added some stuff about MR as a reply to Lefroy’s comment here.
good post
“, I think this general election would be a bore, a missed chance to discuss and shape and fine-tune the future course of the country after the LTTE.”
true
thanks for the comment
Stormcrow. I don’t get what you mean. You accept that there’s dirty politics behind Fonseka’s arrest. Then you say that Fonseka would’ve done the same had he won, perhaps even worse. Are you trying to justify what the government is doing? Fonseka said he would do this and that. Does that give the government to do this and that to Fonseka? I don’t know what’s the purpose of this argument, but if it is presented to justify this shameless act, it’s quite lame.
(missed a word in the above comment) Does that give the government the right to do this and that to Fonseka.
Lefroy,
I haven’t said that it was right, and I have addressed this point before. As a matter of fact, I just logged in 100+km away from where I pressed the original post, thinking perhaps a paragraph about the government was in order, but probably this reply would do.
The point I’m making is not the obvious point that MR is using more power on Fonseka than necessary, or rejecting the same. My point is, those who wanted an end to the MR “kingdom” and all knew VERY WELL, unless they are patent imbeciles, that what they whine about NOW would have been peanuts compared to what the General would do to MR/GR had he won: (he was very open about that and that bragging has part to do in his current situation.) Yet they supported him. And what moral rights do they have right now to whine about something which is still more ethical than what they (including you, despite all pretenses about losing to me in a bet) endorsed with their vote?
What MR is doing is not nice, but worse than that, it’s STUPID. See even Anoma Fonseka is trying to be a heroin now and by this time, a free General would have messed up a lot all by his own. MR gave a lifeline to the JVP.
I think part where MR is wrong has to do with Gota wanting to teach SF a lesson about all the bragging. Part of it may be that they didn’t want to stay till the end of the GE because 6 months elapsed means he can’t be arrested and humbled. STILL, it seems that they are within the law. Do you think had your vote made SF president, he would have acted nicer?
Since I can’t prove that I’m a man of my word and voted for Mahinda as I said I would, I think it is pointless to argue about that. (Thank goodness I had “Kamal’s Penis” to define what the word ‘betray’ means)…. If the purpose of your argument is not to justify what the government is doing, you are right. They are a pathetic political alliance which made a deal with the devil (who lied about HiCorp) and have no moral right to protest about what the government is doing to the devil. I agree with you… But then, if they don’t protest, who will? Will you protest? Of course no. Even this post is indirectly supporting what the government is doing by attacking the people who protest against it for protesting against it. Of course you (perhaps reluctantly) wrote something against it. But then, even Voice In Colombo did that… Will Somaratna Dissanayaka, Dilan Perera, Dinesh Gunawardena, and even Vasudeva say a word against it? No they won’t… I think there is something seriously wrong with that. No responsible citizen can allow the government to ruin the law and order of this country. If you want to attack the UNP, if you want to attack the JVP, fine, do it. But don’t attack them for protesting against the government breaking the law, because that means you indirectly support the government breaking the law.
“But then, if they don’t protest, who will? Will you protest?”
I will, and I have protested already in the previous articles. I will protest to an extent that is justified by my necessity for a more decent political culture. I won’t protest to an extent that it provides a lifeline for an opposition who has nothing else to sell, because that will be deceit: Only reason why opposition is not doing bad things to government is because it doesn’t have the power to do so, not because it’s morally better than the government. So this is no reason why we should favor opposition to government.
Right now the balance in blogsphere is towards “intellectuals” lamenting about poor Fonseka’s fate in the hands of a “feudal” government, so i’m trying to shift the balance towards a less emotional and more objective position — a position that will force the opposition to talk about what they should: policies.