Election on a precipice

Sri Lanka's election season commenced with a thunderbolt, a development unthinkable in those heady days six months ago, when the demise of the Tamil Tigers was celebrated with milk-rice and crackers. Most Sinhalese regard President Mahinda Rajapakse, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse and Commander of the Army Sarath Fonseka as the 'heroic trinity' responsible for their historic triumph over the LTTE. Today, that war-time triumvirate has collapsed and the Sinhala South is compelled to witness the unseemly sight of its saviours battling each other for power. Until his fallout with the Rajapakse brothers, Fonseka shared most of their ideological and political predilections. A Sinhala supremacist intolerant of dissent, he was a key player in the Rajapakse project of turning Sri Lanka into a Sinhala-dominated national security state. But the Rajapakses also have dynastic ambitions; their brazen attempts at monopolising the credit for defeating the LTTE irked Fonseka, just as his brash effort to claim a lion's share of the credit alarmed the Rajapakses. In this highly charged environment, minor irritants became blistering sores, snowballs heralding the ultimate avalanche.

Dynamic candidacy
Fonseka's entrance into the race has deeply affected the political dynamics of the upcoming election. To begin with, it has united and rejuvenated the United National Party (UNP) and the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the two major opposition parties. A balance between the government and the opposition is necessary for the political health of any democracy. When the opposition is more powerful than the government, instability becomes endemic; when the opposition is ineffective, it gives the government a sense of power that is not conducive to moderate thinking and conduct. The Rajapakses' plan was to trounce the twice-defeated Ranil Wickremesinghe of the UNP during the presidential election, and use that victory as a springboard to obtain a two-thirds majority at the parliamentary poll, which must take place before 22 April 2010. This would have been sufficient to enable them to craft a constitution suited to their dynastic needs. The Fonseka factor wreaked havoc on this carefully calibrated plan and energised the opposition, thereby partially restoring the essential balance between the government and the opposition.