Just nine months ago, General Sarath Fonseka was being hailed as a national hero by most of Sri Lanka as he basked in the glory of the victorious military campaign he led against the Tamil Tiger rebels.
Tonight, however, the former army chief was languishing in jail facing a possible death sentence on charges of plotting a coup against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President he tried to challenge in an election last month.
Military police dragged the retired four-star General away this evening after storming his campaign office in the historic centre of Colombo as he met opposition leaders to discuss how to dispute the results of the January 26 election.
“He’s been arrested with his personal assistant,” one of the 58-year-old General’s spokesmen, who is now in hiding, told The Times. “We’re shocked, because we thought the dust was starting to settle.”
Rauff Hakeem, one of the General’s opposition allies, said: “He was humiliated and disgraced in the way he was handled. We were just flabbergasted.”
It was a savage irony for the man who many of the island’s ethnic Tamil minority hold jointly responsible with Mr Rajapaksa for committing war crimes, including shelling innocent civilians, in the last stages of the conflict.
Keheliya Rambukwella, a government minister and spokesman, confirmed that General Fonseka would be tried in a military court on charges of conspiring against the President and planning a coup.
“He’s been plotting against the president while in the military ... with the idea of overthrowing the government,” he said.
His arrest is the latest twist in an extraordinary political melodrama that has consolidated Mr Rajapaksa’s grip on power, but raised concerns about the state of South Asia’s oldest democracy.
President Rajapaksa and General Fonseka were both lauded equally by the island’s ethnic Sinhalese majority for their roles in ending a 26-year civil war which claimed up to 100,000 lives.
But they fell out after Mr Rajapaksa switched the General to the ceremonial post of Chief of Defence Staff in July an apparent bid to curtail the almost unlimited powers of the military.
The General, who also felt he was not given due credit for the Tiger’s defeat, resigned from the army in November and declared his candidacy in the election the following month.
Campaigning was brutal as the two men appeared to have split the Sinhalese vote and both tried to reach out to the Tamils as potential kingmakers.
Mr Rajapaksa won easily in the end, but General Fonseka refused to accept the results, accusing the government of monopolising state media and tampering with ballot-counting.
Yet even before the results had been announced, the government made it clear that it was determined to crush any such challenge.
The day after the poll, as votes were still being counted, hundreds of army troops surrounded the five-star Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel where General Fonseka and his allies were running their campaign.
The Army said the General was holed up inside with 400 supporters, including armed military deserters, although bemused tourists and journalists inside saw no evidence to support that.
He eventually left the hotel – but only after giving up the security detail of 70 soldiers that had been protecting him from a revenge attack by the Tigers’ remnants or successors.
Since then, the government has launched a massive crackdown on the independent media, closing two newspapers, arresting one editor, and detaining and harassing dozens of journalists.
It has also carried out the biggest ever purge of the Sri Lankan army, with a dozen officers removed from their posts, reportedly including three generals.
Now it appears determined to secure a quick conviction that would bring an end to General Fonseka’s political career – and possibly his life as a military court can pass a death sentence for sedition.
The charges could pertain to his allegation that Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Defence Secretary who is also the President’s brother, ordered the execution of Tigers as they tried to surrender.
General Fonseka has since retracted the allegation, but Gotabaya Rajapaksa told the BBC after the election that that was not enough. “He accused me of saying that I gave wrong orders. It came out in the newspapers. So we will follow legal procedures,” he said.
“He had done many mistakes, remember. He was a member of the security council… He divulged certain security information to the public. He did a wrong thing there."
By Jeremy Page
Source: Times Online
