Saturday 23rd September, 2023

Sri Lankan political leaders are known to exude piety from every pore and make it a point to be on their best behaviour when they appear in public. Clad immaculately in white, they speak in a measured tone, pretending that butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths and quoting from various religious texts. Perhaps, during parliamentary debates, the Dhammapada is more quoted than the Constitution, or Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice. But these self-righteous worthies show their true colours when they fly into fits of rage. We saw them in action the other day.

Thursday’s parliamentary proceedings descended into a slanging match, with SJB MP and former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka and ex-President Maithripala Sirisena trading allegations and insults liberally. The nasty set-to erupted when Fonseka accused Sirisena of having let the Easter Sunday carnage happen despite intelligence warnings in 2019, when the latter was the President.

He got Sirisena’s goat. Springing to his feet, an otherwise mild-mannered Sirisena launched into a tirade against Fonseka, and the duo got down and dirty. They slung mud at each other, presumably in the hope that some would stick, and what we witnessed in the House was like a barney in a shebeen.

Fonseka did not mince his words when he accused Sirisena and ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of having masterminded the Easter Sunday terror attacks with an eye to the last presidential election (2019). He claimed Sirisena had left the country in time for the terror attacks, which, he said, benefited Gotabaya politically and electorally. Sirisena shot back, with guns blazing, letting out a stream of invectives, and in a bid to question the credibility of Fonseka’s assertions, he said Fonseka, as the Army Commander, had failed to protect the Army Headquarters against the LTTE.

Referring to the 2006 LTTE suicide attack inside the Army Headquarters, Colombo, he described how Fonseka had been rushed to hospital in a very serious condition. His speech, replete with gory details of Fonseka’s wounds, was antithetical to civility. Such being the manner in which political leaders try to settle political scores and silence their opponents during parliamentary debates, why election campaigns where they go all out to retain or regain power turn out to be bloody is not difficult to understand.

The irony of Thursday’s venomous exchange between Sirisena and Fonseka may not have been lost on keen political observers. They were comrades in arms in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election, where Sirisena, who was the Opposition’s common candidate, came from behind to beat the then sitting President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Fonseka showed praise on Sirisena, and urged the public to vote for the latter to usher in good governance and have their lot improved. He played a pivotal role in the opposition alliance, which made Sirisena’s victory possible against tremendous odds. Sirisena hailed Fonseka as the best warrior Sri Lanka had ever produced and promoted him to the rank of Field Marshal amidst tut-tuts from the discerning public, who questioned the newly-elected President’s wisdom of creating such a high rank.

Thus, Fonseka, who was instrumental in having Sirisena elected President, cannot absolve himself of the blame for the latter’s serious lapses, including those which led to the Easter Sunday attacks, in 2019. Sirisena will have to explain why he elevated to the rank of Field Marshal someone who, he says, could not even protect the heavily-guarded Army Headquarters against the LTTE. They are apparently labouring under the mistaken belief that they can go on duping the public with their claims and counterclaims.