Western Pundit Got It Wrong As Mahinda Romped Home

That was a faux pas on a grand scale. Western media that descended on Colombo expecting to see incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa being given the shock treatment at the January 26th presidential poll finished up been shocked instead.

Some western countries along with international NGOs and media had it in for President Rajapaksa from the day he decided in the immediate aftermath of Marvil Aru that the LTTE had crossed the threshold of his tolerance.

Rajapaksa saw that the only respect he would get from the LTTE would be if he replied in the only way that Prabhakaran understood- with a sharp and massive military riposte.

As the LTTE, considered militarily unconquerable by some Colombo-based diplomats and their security panjandrums abroad, began to suffer defeat after defeat in a coordinated military onslaught, the attacks on President Rajapakse and the government became increasingly strident.

It reached its crescendo in the last days of the war last May.

Since then his western critics have been hoping for regime change, searching and groping for reasons to bring the downfall of the president even as the pro-LTTE diaspora in the western world continued to engage in political gimmickry like its plans to set up a transnational government.

A pall of gloom settled among his critics when the president decided to call an election ahead of time to seize on his obvious national popularity as the individual who paved the way for the defeat of the LTTE after nearly three decades of brutal war with unambiguous policy directives.

At the time it seemed like a cake walk for Rajapaksa. The opposition depressed after its decimation at recent local elections was lacking a strong and credible candidate to take on a triumphant president.

Then like a sphinx rose Rajapaksa’s erstwhile army commander with whose considerable weight and military experience, Sri Lanka overwhelmed the LTTE cutting it to shreds.

When retired General Sarath Fonseka threw his hat into the political arena there was rejoicing among the disparate opposition forces who saw in him the only figure with a national reputation that could take on President Rajapaksa on equal terms- as a war hero in his own right and therefore worthy of assuming political power himself.

So the myth was created that a battle royal was on the cards. Visiting journalists were fed with this hype by interested Colombo-based diplomats, international service organizations and political analysts.

The media swallowed this Colombo-centred view propagated by its adherents and so we saw the western media prepare their readers for a battle as significant as that of Mark Antony at Philipi.

They said it would go down to the wire. They said it was too close to call, that it would be a photo-finish. The foreign media waited for what they thought would be a gladiatorial spectacle worthy of ancient Rome.

Even here in Bangkok regionally- based journalists reverently imbibing western media copy, were talking of close fight at the polls.

How did they get it so wrong? Tuning into the airwaves of Colombo society and assorted punditry they anticipated the two big beasts at Sri Lanka’s presidential election mauling each other.

After all had they not jointly mauled the LTTE, called the world’s most ruthless terrorist organization by the FBI, only eight months earlier?

But thanks to modern communication technology even those of us outside Sri Lanka saw a clearer picture of the election battle at home as the campaign came to a halt.

On the day of the election I told colleagues here that President Rajapaksa would win 60% of the vote while the retired General Sarath Fonseka would garner 38%. At one stage it seemed very much so until the final figures indicated that I a couple of percentage points out either way.

Yet it was far, far closer to end result than the neck-to-neck contest predicted. Why was it that those parachute journalists who had dropped in on Colombo get it so wrong while those of us who were abroad seemed to have a firmer grasp of the political reality at home?

The new media helped. Admittedly there was a welter of websites, blogs, emails and other forms of political and gossipy chatter that caused confusion with their inconsistencies.

Still, amid this plethora of voices reminiscent of the Tower of Babel there were also the video clips of campaign meetings, media conference and interviews that helped one to observe the political developments more closely.

Perhaps one of the first to strike a chord was Sarath Fonseka’s unsure and tentative platform performance. Politics is as much the art of theatre as it is of substance, achievement and promise.

The retired general might have been a grand master on the battlefield. But he had no political ‘presence’, he was not convincing to sway the electorate sufficiently away from the incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa who had provided the political lead for the war against the LTTE and stamped his seal on it.

Sarath Fonseka’s brusque style, clipped tones and parade ground approach as seen on circulating video clips and posted on YouTube hardly seemed the stuff that made convincing politics, especially when matched against a veteran of the hustings.

If this was a failing in the essentially military man, it was not his personal shortcomings alone that resulted in a convincing victory for the incumbent president.

The political novice Fonseka was backed by a coalition of forces hastily cobbled together with the single-minded purpose of ousting President Rajapaksa. But in real life these parties were more divided than Gaul in Caesar’s time.

It was this hotch-potch of political parties with conflicting ideologies and policies, from the centre-right United National Party (UNP) to the Sinhala nationalist (some might say extremist) Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP) with its Marxist ideas, topped with ethnic Tamil and Muslim entities, that presented Sarath Fonseka as a credible alternative to the incumbent.

The Sri Lankan voter refused to bite the dangled carrot that promised “believable change”, the combined opposition’s campaign slogan. They opted for continuity.

Fonseka had promised to abolish the all- powerful executive presidency or whittle down its powers.

Assuming that was done, what next was the question in the public mind. Would power then reside in what seemed like a witches’ broth of political parties with conflicting political and economic policies and aspirations and how stable would that be?

Moreover Sarath Fonseka overestimated the national political clout of those who led him into politics. The JVP probably convinced him that it was still a force as before when it even fielded a presidential candidate some 28 years ago.

In the event that myth was exploded right in the face of the opposition. The JVP once held sway over vast swathes of the South and pockets in the central hills and the north central region.

The election showed that while the JVP might have retained some of its organizational skills, its voter base among the majority Sinhala people have been vastly eroded. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s convincing majorities among the Sinhalese, especially in the south showed he had skillfully won them over.

Further proof that the JVP that led two insurgencies against elected governments in 1971 and late 1980s, is now just a shadow of its former self is the votes cast for the retired General.

On an average Fonseka garnered about 35% of the votes. This is about the vote bank that the UNP, the main opposition party, has in most parts of the country except Colombo city which is its fief.

So the Fonseka vote was largely the UNP support with little substantive contribution from the JVP.

The other let down for Fonseka was the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the LTTE’s political proxy, that decided to throw in its lot with the opposition. The TNA was expected to enthuse the Tamil voters to cast their lot with the General rather than the President.

The Tamils did not oblige. Though Fonseka won huge majorities from the Tamil and Muslim minorities, the votes were too few to make a significant difference as had been anticipated.

Mahinda Rajapaksa’s rural simplicity and his common touch helped him stamp his supremacy against an opponent who seemed out of his depths in the political arena with no clear policy alternative to offer.

The opposition must now say in the words of Cassius “the fault dear Brutus is not in the stars but in ourselves……” and start afresh. Only then could it hope to make a showing, individually or severally at the parliamentary elections due shortly.

-Asian Tribune -