| By Melanie Gouby As published in The Samosa He may seem the most unlikely candidate of all, but former army chief General Sarath Fonseka has shaken off the Sri Lankan establishment and engaged in a fierce campaign to beat his former ally to President Rajapaksa had called for early elections, hoping to strengthen his rule thanks to the nationalist sentiments prevailing in Sri Lanka following his government’s victory over the Tamil Tigers rebels last spring, ending a 26-year civil war. Rajapaksa was expected to win the January 26th election hands down – but he didn’t reckon on Fonseka entering the fray. As a military man who took tough decisions in the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerilla movement, Fonseka was not exactly the designated candidate for the opposition, and certainly not for the Tamil minority. Nevertheless, last Wednesday the Tamil National Alliance, a party representing the Tamil population, declared it would “request from all Sri Lankans … to vote for General Sarath Fonseka”. The campaign revolves around ethnic issues, but little is being said by either candidate about actual policies or how they will realise their lofty promises of good governance and economical revival. Fonseka has committed himself to abolishing the executive presidency – which currently gives the president over-arching power – as well as fighting corruption and making concessions to the Tamil minority. He promises to grant an amnesty to former militants and says that government troops will return occupied private lands to their Tamils owners. But Fonseka is also an ardent Sinhalese nationalist and has yet to declare he will make concrete political concessions to the Tamils and recognise their right to self-determination. Some think his courtship of the Tamil population is simply a calculated electoral move. “Personally I don’t believe him because he made literal statements as the leader of the army, saying that the minorities don’t have a place here,” said Sheila Richards, the head of a Colombo-based peace and reconciliation NGO. “The military is also behind the violation of media rights and the lack of freedom of expression.” Fonseka promised he would pass a freedom of information law, and recently claimed that Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the Minister of Defence and brother of Mahinda, should take responsibility for the killing of journalists in recent years. At the heart of the feud between Fonseka and the Rajapaksa brothers lies a dispute over both who should take credit for the victory against the LTTE, and who is to blame for the high civilian death toll. It was army chief General Fonseka who commanded the troops that finally defeated the LTTE after 26 years of bloody civil war, but President Rajapaksa credited the victory mainly to himself and his brother. And when Fonseka was asked by US officials to testify in an investigation into possible war crimes in November, palpable tensions began to emerge within the power triumvirate. Fonseka later declared that he would welcome such investigations once he was elected, and accused Gotabaya Rajapaksa of being responsible for the alleged crimes. Since then, the election has been little more than a media circus, with each side hurling accusations at the other. This blame game does not fool many Sri Lankans. To many, Fonseka is just the lesser of two evils, an anti-establishment candidate who will keep the establishment running. “We are left with the choice of an extremely corrupt, centralised government which has disregarded the written constitution and runs the country like it’s a family business, or we’ve got an ex-General who was hired for the job purely due to his ruthless past and is just a mouthpiece for the opposing parties at the moment,” complains Sammath Gammampila, a 22-year-old Sinhalese student. “What can you expect of someone like him, who led the war and denies his implication in the violation of human rights during the war? He was leading the army. But the presidency will be more ruthless if Rajapaksa is elected,” adds Sheila Richards. Even if he is genuine about his fight against corruption, General Fonseka will be confronted by the realities of Sri Lanka’s establishment. “The way things are now, it will be difficult to change it rapidly. Because Fonseka comes from a background that is close to this corrupted power, he was at the top of the army, it seems unlikely that those promises will be kept,” explains an opposition MP who wishes to remain anonymous. On top of this, Sri Lankans wonder whether Fonseka will have what it takes to turn around the economy and bring them the comfort they are longing for. “Full stomachs, a home and a job, that’s what most people want. They have forgotten long ago about their rights and about democracy. The war brainwashed them into thinking that this near state of dictatorship is normal,” adds the opposition MP. But the rival candidates have barely touched on the economy during the campaign, and Fonseka’s manifesto does not make promises beyond easing the cost of living and providing employment for the country’s youth. The reality is that economic issues may well be left in the hands of foreign powers, with India and China struggling to impose their respective spheres of influence over Sri Lanka. New Delhi has a history of meddling in the island’s politics, and it was thanks to an Indian intelligence tip-off that Fonseka was ousted from his position in the army, according to Seema Sengupta, a freelance journalist based in Kolkata, India. This is likely to push Fonseka closer to China, who largely funded last year’s decisive attack on the LTTE. Whoever is elected will have to choose his allies carefully, but a stable Sri Lanka will also require foreign powers to act responsibly. “India, as the largest South Asian neighbour, will be required to play a constructive role in ensuring that Sri Lanka can prosper”, says Sengupta. However, international pressure has had little effect in bending the will of the Sri Lankan elite either during or since the war last year. Tamils voters, the “kingmakers” in the election according to observers, will have difficulty forgetting recent events and the ruthlessness with which they were repressed. On the 26th, they will have to make a tough call on Fonseka – is the enemy of their enemy their friend? |
| Last Updated on Thursday, 14 January 2010 03:36 |
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Sri Lanka’s war chiefs fight for the spoils of peace
Published January 14, 2010 Colombo Leave a CommentTags: elections; war crimes; tamils, Fonseka
The COPenhagen conference has started, what will you do to help the world?
Published December 8, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
By Melanie Gouby, as published in The Samosa
Burdened by years of conflict, the people of Sri Lanka’s east coast thought massive international fundraising for the region following the 2004 tsunami would redevelop the economy and improve the quality of life. Instead, the benefits were frittered away through ignorance, incompetence and corruption. Melanie Gouby reports
Fish are rare in the waters off Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka’s southeastern coast, but dozens of motorboats line the beach like colourful beached whales. Donors’ names are painted on their sides proclaiming Western generosity. Their wrapped motors show they have never been used.
Four fishermen are sitting in front of a small cabin, repairing a net bitten by a dolphin the night before. None of them has a boat of their own, despite the row of abandoned hulls. They must collaborate and rent boats from companies based in Colombo.
“When they came to help us after the tsunami, NGOs gave the boats to the village leaders because they wanted them to supervise the distribution,” says Haj, 34. “But the leaders kept the boats to themselves. They tried to sell them to us. Normally it costs 300,000 rupees. They told the people to give them only 100,000 rupees. But it is still too much for us.”
In the wake of the tsunami that devastated Sri Lanka in 2004, international NGOs rushed in to offer the money of generous donors from all around the world. Village leaders, local authorities or local NGOs were used as intermediaries between international agencies and the population, but very little of that money actually went to the people. Corruption diverted it to a handful of pockets.
“Many NGOs came to help, but most of them did whatever they liked. They were not aware of the context, the culture, the politics. They did a lot of harm and misspent their money”, says K Arulvaratharajah, field coordination assistant at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Trincomalee.
Five years later, the coast is still strewn with houses in ruins and the lack of infrastructure is appalling. To travel the 300km from Colombo to Arugam Bay by car takes ten hours. Phone lines are rare and the internet is almost impossible to access. The local economy is plagued by this isolation and people have to survive by accumulating small jobs. They help in a hotel in the high season, cultivate their rice paddy in the low season and go fishing at night.
NGOs could have helped develop the economy for the long term. Instead they built cheap houses and gave poor quality boats to just about anybody, regardless of their real occupation.
“I remember meeting somebody here who had a restaurant. He did not even have a cooker. No one had looked into other kinds of needs. They assumed they were all fishermen because it was a coastal area”, says Louise Shah, head of monitoring and evaluation for the Community Livelihood Support Program, a UN project.
Naleen, a hotel owner in Arugam Bay, had to rebuild everything step by step, taking loans with private banks that he repaid with money made through a coconut timber export business. He does not understand why aid organisations did not set up loans for businesses like his own. “25 people live thanks to me now. What can a few boats do? All the hotels along the beach just reopened a year ago because we were not helped to start again.”
NGOs also employed local staff, whose ethnicity and personal interests could impede their objectivity. In some instances, only certain communities benefited from the aid. Instead of bringing everyone together as many had hoped, the disaster and ensuing aid relief exacerbated the ethnic strife. Tensions between the coastal people and those inland were fuelled by the unequal inflow of money and the impression that the other community always received more. Sinhalese farmers suffered from the diversion of the government’s money towards the guerrilla conflict in the north, Tamils suffered from being the target of an increased military presence in the region, Muslims suffered from the retrenchment of their community and ensuing lack of support.
The four fishermen on the beach are angry. To them, it has all been a waste. They saw NGO workers coming in nice 4×4s, staying in five stars hotels and leaving boats no one would ever use. With the tsunami, they lost everything – their houses, their livelihoods, for some of them their families too. They never saw the money sent by international donors, and once they were finally able to start fishing again, they discovered that the fish were not there anymore – a natural phenomenon after a tsunami.
People here are disillusioned and melancholic. Tomorrow may bring peace or war, for them it is “same old, same old”. Nothing seems to matter much anymore.
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