Of kings, king-makers and midwifery

The LTTE was militarily defeated 8 months ago. It was known then and even before that a military defeat of the LTTE is not co-terminus with a comprehensive burial of Eelamism. Eelamists were bound to revert to the Chelvanayagam formula: ‘a little now, more later’. It was known that Eelamists, like any opportunist, finding themselves in hot water would opt for a bath. Some opportunities are not foreseen but when they do arrive, they are seized with relish. Nothing, we note, gives more options for opportunists than the presence of other opportunists.
Here are some statements (yes, they were stated and have not been contradicted or retracted) that caught my eye this morning.
Rauff Hakeem (Daily Mirror of January 8, 2010): ‘Common candidate is only an interim solution’. Read this (again and again): ‘The foundation has been laid for the TNA to take over administration of their motherland (sic) and they should grasp the opportunity with both hands’.

Mouth piece

What’s this ‘opportunity’ that Hakeem speaks of? The candidature of Sarath Fonseka! In other words Fonseka has offered the TNA the North and East (the ‘motherland’ of Eelam-speak). Who or what is the TNA? The Tamil National Alliance was from inception the mouthpiece of the LTTE. It was described as the LTTE’s proxy in Parliament, illegally ‘elected’, vociferous in vilifying the Sri Lankan security forces and spared no pains to undermine the Government’s efforts to crush the LTTE. Sarath Fonseka has opted to be the TNA’s proxy. In fact he has undertaken to be the midwife to the (re)birthing of Eelam.
R. Sampanthan, leader of the TNA has told the Lankadeepa that Fonseka agreed to re-merge the North and East. TNA representatives in fact came on television to state that their decision to support Fonseka was based on him accepting all their conditions. It was stated that while Fonseka agreed to all demands, the TNA did not accommodate any of Fonseka’s requests.
What does all this mean? It means at one level that Fonseka is given to promise anything and everything to anyone and everyone as long as he thinks it will help him win. That alone takes away his purported ‘edge’ of being a different kind of candidate, a non-political politician.
More seriously, he has by accepting these demands essentially agreed to turn back all the gains achieved in the battlefield. TNA taking over the North and East along with some 10,000 LTTE cadres being released is asking for a return to the darkest period in our history. That’s change, yes, but in the wrong direction. Fonseka has essentially sold out to the Eelamists, he has sold out to the forces within and without Sri Lanka who worked and still work day and night to destabilize the nation, divide our people and perpetuate misery. That’s not the stuff one expects from a change-candidate.
I can understand people who think they own certain communities wanting to be king-makers. Sometimes they don’t have any other option. On the other hand, those communities, in this case the Tamil and Muslims, must understand whether they like it or not what these statements and agreements mean and what kind of scenarios they can be expected to produce.
For 30 years, the Tamil people (more than any other community) suffered as a result of Tamil politicians playing with their anxieties and cooking their aspirations. Those Tamil politicians who played the communal card gave birth to a monster called Prabhakaran. Sure, Sinhala chauvinists played a role, but the Tamil political leadership is not without guilt. Certain bucks cannot be passed. The entire Eelam project was built on the marshy land that is ‘aspiration’. The political edifice had for brick and mortar ‘fear’ and ‘myth’: a potent mix in the short-term but eventually an inferior composite made for breaking.
The TNA has demanded a return to that political architecture in which is resident suspicion, hatred and where tensions spawn grotesque creatures such as violence and terrorism. Fonseka has agreed to support them in this vile project.
There are king-makers and king-makers. Some sufferable and some not. Politicians play politics. The voter has to choose. We were told that Fonseka is a change-agent, someone who will cure society’s ills. As of now he’s proved beyond a shadow of doubt that he is as wishy-washy as they come. His manifesto is a wish list and when someone like Wijedasa Rajapaksa admits that neither Fonseka nor his backers can come up with anything concrete, cannot substantiate claim and does not have what it takes to show the voter the nitty-gritty of political promise, the why and the how and asks us instead to ‘trust’, then it is political trickery through and through and nothing less than that.
How can the voter trust a man who has become a proxy of Prabhakaran’s proxy? How can the voter trust a man who has become the play thing of corrupt politicians and indeed those who have themselves a long history of undermining democracy (the UNP and the JVP)? I can understand someone not wanting to vote for Mahinda Rajapaksa, but Fonseka is not showing he is worthy of anyone’s consideration except perhaps the na‹ve, the blind and the hopelessly compromised. The good, the principled and the true-change-wanters have to look elsewhere if they are really honest about intent.

Win more support

Fonseka’s love affair with easy money, with kick-backs, helping-family, with new found companions who journeyed against the nation and now this open betrayal of all the men and women who sacrificed life and limb to protect our territorial integrity and sovereignty shows that whatever his track record may have been as a soldier (he is not the immortalized hero he wants to be, but certainly played a key role) he is now nothing more than an easily purchased third-rate politician.
One may blame Mahinda Rajapaksa for numerous things and rightfully so I would add, but he will no doubt win more support if people are asked to choose between him and a man who is willing to barter off all principles to keep a king-maker who once worshipped a ‘sun god’ called Prabhakaran. Fonseka as hero of an Eelamist king-maker and the ‘Maharajano’: if that’s what it comes down to, then it is a no-brainer, Mahinda Rajapaksa most certainly is a far more appealing prospect. If that is our ‘consolation’ we are poor indeed, one can argue, but then Fonseka would make us far more impoverished.
Speaking strictly for myself, I am not inspired by anyone who is willing to take on the job of being midwife designated to help re-birth Eelam.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com.