Last week, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Rajitha Senaratne informed a press conference that President Maithripala Sirisena was proposing that former army commander Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka should “take responsibility for disciplining the country” for a period of two years. Sirisena’s extraordinary proposition was made in the context of growing strikes and protests throughout the country against the government’s attacks on living conditions and on social and democratic rights.
This is no small matter. Fonseka is notorious for having presided over war crimes, particularly during the final years of the government’s military offensives against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). During that period, thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. Fonseka was also allegedly involved in attacking any journalists who made even the slightest criticism of the war, and branding as traitors workers and others engaged in protests to defend their democratic rights. Former President Mahinda Rajapakse and Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse considered Fonseka as sufficiently ruthless to implement their repressive measures, until he was deemed their political enemy.
Some ministers, nervous about the impact on ordinary working people of Sirisena’s proposal for a police state, tried to dismiss it as a passing remark. One minister claimed it was a “joke,” while another said that the proposal, “made lightly,” had been exaggerated out of all proportion.
Replying to a question raised in the parliament, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe denied that the government had decided to set up a special army unit. In the same breath, however, he admitted…