At the last Presidential Elections MR obtained a very slim majority of 180,000 over the UNP Candidate and less than 0.3% over 50%. If 90,001 voters cross over to General Fonseka's side, the winner would be General Fonseka. Assuming that everything remains same, the JVP votes which were cast to MR would be sufficient for this change since there are definitely over 500,000 JVP votes. The whole of UNP except those who started supporting MR because of the war victories minus those who have rejected MR after the real crusher of the LTTE General Sarath Fonseka who consented officially to come forward as the Presidential Candidate could be about 100,000 From Hela Urumaya at least 100,000 would be in favour of SF. Even from the UPFA there could be over 800,000 of which over 300,000 due to Mervyn Silva's dirty tactics would be in favour of SF.
The Tamil voters who were not allowed by the LTTE upon the agreement with the Rajapakses would atleast be 80% which means 60% of 800,000 i.e. 480,000 votes more for SF. A few thousand of NFF votes would also be for SF. A bigger percentage of Army personnel and their families and personnel from other armed forces will be for SF. Mangala Samaraweera's, Rauf Hakeem's and Mano Ganesan's supporters would also add over 500,000 to SF. All in all there could be well over 2,400,000 votes more than MR in favour of SF which is nearly 22% difference. That means General Fonseka would get about 60% and MR about 38% and the rest about 2%. In other words, out of the votes cast which is about 11 million, SF would get about 6,600,000 and MR about 4,180,000 votes. If one thinks this is exaggerated, let us assume that SF gets 5,500,001 which is nearly 1.1 million less than the above, still he is the winner since he gets 50% plus 1 vote which is mine. This is the present situation and things could change drastically and SF could even get more than this.
It appears that everybody is looking forward for a change due to the very high corruption of all the Ministers and especially by the Rajapakse Brothers who think that they have got a mandate to use the taxpayers money to use in anyway they like. Law and order has been completely devastated by the thuggery of the Ministers and the police force being very highly politicized. CCD had been responsible for most of the political killings and assaults of the political opponents and the criminals like Vaas Gunawardenes have been given promotions for all their dirty work carried out for and on behalf of the politicians. Let the year 2010 be the turning point of Sri Lanka towards progress and the real "Gowrawaanthika Saamaya" amongst all the Sri Lankans irrespective of caste, creed, colour, religion and especially political beliefs.
All our Very Good Wishes to General Fonseka to be our NEXT PRESIDENT.
General Sarath Fonseka
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Unlike most of his counterparts, new politician, General Sarath Fonseka was right on time for his maiden press conference at a posh Colombo hotel on Sunday. Fonseka formally announced at the packed conference that he was in the running for the Presidential polls on January 26.
``This is a special event. I am ready to answer questions you have been asking me day and night. Can I do it? I can do it. Will I win it? I will win,’’ Fonseka said announcing his candidature for President.
Fonseka said he was the common candidate of the opposition but added that he was yet to decide the name of the party under which he would file his nomination. The ‘swan’ would be this symbol.
The candidature of Fonseka, who has done four training courses in India and loves Indian movies and music, has livened up the political arena in Sri Lanka. A coalition of opposition parties, led by the main opposition party, the United National Party, has decided to support him against Rajapaksa
Both Rajapaksa and Fonseka he are seen as two important architects of the victory against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Rajapaksa gave the political impetus to the battle against the LTTE which successive governments since 1983 had failed to do. And Fonseka remained in the middle of the fight for decades. While army chief, he was seriously injured when an apparently pregnant LTTE suicide cadre blew herself up inside the army headquarters in April, 2006. Fonseka survived after battling with death for three months in a Singapore hospital.
Soon after, the general vowed that he ``will not hand over the war against the Tigers to the next army commander.’’ He also told the media in 2008 that Tiger chief V Prabhakaran will not make the customary heroes day speech on November 27, 2009.
On Sunday, he was making new promises. He promised that he would be a ``leader to re-establish democracy to end the family rule of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’’. He promised to abolish executive presidency from Sri Lanka, saying it was the root of all evils.
On his controversial remarks to a section of the media in 2008 that Sri Lanka belonged to Sinhalese, Fonseka claimed he was misquoted and maintained any solution to the ethnic conflict should be acceptable to all stake holders. ``The majority should take care of the rights of the minorities.’’
The poker-faced former chief of defence staff (CDS), Fonseka first spoke in Sinhala, then in English and took a range of questions on his reasons for joining politics and his ideological platform and his relations with India.
He remained, probably deliberately, vague on political issues. Especially on the 13th Amendment to the Lankan Constitution introduced after the 1987 Indo-Lanka accord. The Amendment dealt with devolution of powers to regions with an aim to give some amount of regional autonomy to Tamil-dominated areas in the north and east of the country. ``The amendment was done 20 years ago under certain circumstances. The situation is different,’’ he said indicating that it needed a re-look in the current context.
The general was quick to respond when asked about his relationship with India, saying if he does not answer that, it could well become an issue.
“And they (India) are the closest neighbour and powerful neighbour. So we have to obviously have 100 per cent or thousand per cent best relationship with India”, Fonseka said.
“If somebody says okay I worked in China or Pakistan…to get military equipment to fight the war”, he said. “But those countries helped us in the military equipment but the Indian government morally and politically helped us to win the war”, Fonseka said.
“The relationship with India has always been at the highest. Even in future I like to maintain the best of relationship”, Fonseka said.
At the end of the 90-odd minute interaction, it was clear that the first four-star general of Sri Lanka might have shed his uniform earlier this month after 40 years of service but clearly he was not ready to let go the discipline of military life. But he also knows that it would take more than just discipline to make an impact against Rajapaksa. Punctuality is good but whether Fonseka’s sense of political timing is equally good remains to be seen.
originally posted here: http://www.hindustantimes.com/Sri-Lanka-s-ex-army-chief-Fonseka-to-run-for-presidential-polls/H1-Article1-481318.aspx