Sri Lanka Arrests Defeated Election Candidate Fonseka (Update3)
February 09, 2010, 6:45 PM EST(Adds comment from peace group in third paragraph.)
By Paul Tighe and Jay Shankar
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka arrested General Sarath Fonseka, the opposition candidate defeated in last month’s presidential election, prompting a call from United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to maintain peace.
Military police arrested Fonseka late yesterday at his office in the capital of Colombo, the Defense Ministry said. He is accused of military offenses, Luxman Hulugalla, a spokesman for the Media Center for National Security, said without elaborating.
“The arrest will give a sense of resurgence of instability,” Jehan Perera, director of the National Peace Council advocacy group, said today by telephone from Colombo. “It will blight the hope that Sri Lanka will be stable after elections.”
President Mahinda Rajapaksa was re-elected on Jan. 26 after winning 58 percent of the vote in the first national election since the defeat of Tamil Tiger separatists in May ended a 30- year conflict. The Election Commissioner last week rejected opposition claims of irregularities during the voting, saying the results were properly tallied.
“The peaceful conduct of the first post-conflict national election and its aftermath are of the highest importance for long term peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka,” Ban said in a statement from New York yesterday, according to the UN.
Court Martial
Fonseka is accused of conspiring to topple the government and holding discussions with political parties to achieve that aim and will face a court martial, the Daily News cited Hulugalla as saying. Investigations “are on,” military spokesman Prasad Samarasinghe said, without giving details.
Fonseka, 59, led the army when it defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, ending their fight for a separate Tamil homeland in the north and east of the South Asian island nation. Rajapaksa called the election two years before his mandate expired to capitalize on his government’s defeat of the rebels.
Rajapaksa, 64, and Fonseka fell out after the president moved the general to a ceremonial post and accused him of plotting a coup. Fonseka was supported by the main opposition parties and had the backing of the main Tamil political alliance in the election, where he won 40 percent of the vote.
Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held by April.
Election Campaign
“The arrest has been motivated by the government’s desire to take Fonseka out of the contest in the general elections,” Perera said. Sri Lankans “will see it as a continuation of corruption and undemocratic rule. Internationally, people would have seen Sri Lanka settling down and taking the path of democracy.”
Amnesty International said Fonseka’s arrest “escalates post-election repression,” including the detention of his supporters and threats to journalists, and accused Rajapaksa’s government of showing less and less tolerance for criticism.
“The timing of the arrest is troubling given reports that Sarath Fonseka had announced earlier in the day that he was prepared to testify before an international court on war crimes charges against the Sri Lanka government,” Amnesty said in an e-mailed statement.
Rajapaksa pledged to establish a united country after the civil war. He said after his election victory he will submit proposals about a political solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic divisions after talking with all parties, and has vowed to spend $4 billion, or almost 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product, rebuilding roads and power plants in the north.
--Editors: Edward DeMarco, John Brinsley
To contact the reporters on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net; Jay Shankar in Bangalore at jshankar1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net.
