1982 all over again

Over the past year, events have moved quickly in Sri Lanka. At the end of the war, less than ten months ago, the Sinhalese people appeared united and triumphant. Army Commander Sarath Fonseka often appeared alongside President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya. Yet today, Fonseka, after losing in the recent presidential poll, is in custody after a humiliating arrest by military police; his election posters have been ripped off the walls; and anti-Rajapakse demonstrations have been attacked by government thugs. What happened?

Prior to Fonseka becoming a presidential candidate, Rajapakse could have expected to win the election with a 70 to 80 percent majority. Observers who argue that Ranil Wickremesinghe, leader of the opposition United National Party (UNP), could have polled close to five million votes, as he did in the 2005 presidential election, ignore the seismic shift in the situation since then. In 2005, Wickremesinghe was the one responsible for a 'peace dividend' under the Ceasefire Agreement signed in 2002, from which all communities had benefited. In 2010, in contrast, he was the one seen to have been ready to cede a large part of the country to the Tamil Tigers, while Rajapakse had led the nation to victory over the hated LTTE, after it broke the ceasefire. A grateful populace was thus expected to vote overwhelmingly for the incum-bent president.