Sarath Fonseka And Minority Politics
Sarath Fonseka posters in Jaffna, 2010.
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (National Post). Then when he ran for President in 2010, he won mainly in minority areas. Which shows you how things can change.
What’s the lesson here? For me, it’s that politics trumps ethnicity. It’s not that the Rajapaksas are inherently racist. I mean, maybe they are (I don’t think so), but whatever they do is mediated by political pressure – ie, people calling them and asking for or giving them feedback. For the Rajapaksas, a significant minority is Sinhala Nationalist, so they bow to that political reality. Sarath Fonseka, who had hitherto been considered a racist [by some people], suddenly became the minority protector in 2010, as positioned against Mahinda. Which is crazy, right, except it’s not. It’s not like he had a change of heart or even that it mattered. That was his political reality.
IMHO, the biggest problem Tamils have isn’t the Sinhalese, it’s that they’re so divided politically. In fairness, Tamils did exercise significant political pressure after Independence and got little but beatings and pogroms in return. They were once the main opposition, but little good it seemed to do. When Tamils, under the yoke of the LTTE, effectively tried to opt out of the political process altogether, however, things got even worse. When the LTTE ethnically cleansed Muslims and alienated Eastern Tamils, things got even worse. Now it’s a fractured and decimated polity which can’t really swing elections.
Except it could. As Fonseka showed, Tamil speaking people can still form a semi-effective vote base. If the UNP had its shit halfway together they would capture this minority vote, but instead it’s slipped away to smaller, weaker ethnic parties (like the Tamil National Alliance and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress). But that vote base is there, and there is a political reality which can make even the most Sinhala politician (or soldier) get real.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
Why are we accepting that he’s racist based on that statement?
Fonseka is not a politician. What set him apart was the fact that he spoke uninhibited, which landed him in jail.
I think he was brave to make a statement that he truly believed in by stating a reality that Mahinda conveniently only alludes to when petting the Sinhala Buddhist sentiment.
It was the media and the competing politics that framed him as a racist, and a fool, among other things. We don’t need to fall for that. He’s human. That is all.
I don’t consider him a racist, but he certainly wouldn’t have been seen as a minority champion, until he became a candidate
He wasn’t a minority champion. I dont think most minorities even care if he is in jail or not. What he got was a vote against MR than a vote for Fonseka.
I too agree to this. Minorities, in this case tamils have no reason to love Mr.Fonseka. They just became anti-MR.
Whether Fonseka going to be more “fair” to the “minorities” than MR would be a highly debatable thing because people at his age really don’t change.
[...] somehow be an asshole without feeling like one, simply cause you don’t get feedback. And as I’ve been arguing, politics is a feedback mechanism. Politicians don’t drive public opinions as much as ride [...]
Nah….Tamils can’t swing the vote not because they are divided,but their numbers are dwindling.But if you look at the pattern in N/E elections since 2009, TNA has had clean sweeps in almost all elections (except for Kayts where EPDP runs a defacto island state). Even last provincial council elections, the govt. used the mighty state in the North,but TNA won them handsomely…..
So to say Tamils are divided is factually wrong.But the problem is the Sinhala majority is overwhelmingly pro-Mahinda,so even if minorities vote in large numbers it makes little effect.
Now the time for Thondaman’s “bargaining politics” are over. It’s time for them to use international politics for their favour.Now slowly but surely the IC is becoming sympathetic to Tamil cause…these are good signs
this shows the real nature of the tamil politics since the beginning of their communal politics since chelvas and ponnambalams. their main strategy was to isolate their vote base from participatory democracy thus depriving their people from the benefits of the system. then this marginalization due their own fault was sold within their vote base as discrimination based on race. howmany times main tamil political parties from north except for EPDP being a part of a ruling government. this is the same tribal line current TNA is taking.
Inherently tamills world over is a very inclusive race and thus vote based on that communal line, but if u take the last elections after the defeat of LTTE, voting patterns shows that this communal base is eroding, even though TNA won their percentage has dropped significantly.
Tamils,particularly those in the norh consider themselves a distinct entity separate from sinhalese people.So if they vote for sinhala political parties, there unique identity gets diluted.When they vote for a tamil party in numbers,they get highlighted.So the tendency is to vote for a Tamil party.
On the other hand,post mullivaikkal, tamil culture and tamil identity is under threat.so just like sikhs in 1980s they become more “Tamil”….
Being more “Tamil” is not going to help the Sri Lankan Tamils to be honest. Being even more insular, introverted and ethnocentric is not going to help the Tamil people. The Tamils of Sri Lanka live on an island with a Sinhalese majority and other non-Tamils such as the Moors/Malays/Burghers etc. It might be an on comfortable reality, but it is the reality nonetheless.