Under Pressure, Rajapaksa Played His Card Smartly On Fonseka

June 2, 2012

By James Pryor and Muheed Jeeran -

James Pryor

Muheed Jeeran

Today, the former Army Chief of Sri Lanka Sarath Fonseka is able to move freely to any part of the country he chooses. But his political future looks very uncertain in becoming a lawmaker in Sri Lanka. He will however, be a headache to this current regime. It looks like he is not going to give up his confrontation with the Rajapaksa regime and will play a vital role as part of the opposition politicians in the future election in Sri Lanka.

It was the pressure mounted from international community to release Fonseka that made forced the regime to release him. However, the government categorically denied any knowledge of international pressure and even stated to the local media (via their politicians) that they did so based purely on local interest. Well some reports clearly indicate that the Rajapaksa regime is not totally immune to international pressure.

The President said to the local media that his brother (and current Defense Secretary), Gotabaya Rajapaksa is the person that has the most interest in Sarath Fonseka’s release. If you look at the recent interview given by the Defense Secretary to the Sunday Leader Newspaper on 27^th May 2012, he contradicts the President’s statement. In that interview, Editor Frederica Jansz was asking her first five questions about the release of Fonseka and the Defense Secretary was not at all interested in talking about the matter and threatened to cancel the interview if the editor continued to press him on the issue.

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