It is official now. Sarath Fonseka will take on Mahinda Rajapaksa. He has been dubbed as the Common Candidate of the Opposition. Mahinda Rajapaksa, true to form, has come up with an excellent rejoinder to the tag: ‘I am the common candidate of the nation and representative of common aspirations’. Now it is time to compare and contrast and we can expect a lot of it in the coming months.

Mahinda Rajapaksa is the incumbent and retains his executive powers until election day. That counts. His party is in power. That counts, in terms of organizational capacities, the lure of patronage, employment of media and so on. Being in the rough and tumble of politics for four decades must count. I think this is his main advantage. He’s known. He has contested, campaigned, lost, won, has been Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Prime Minister and President. People know his weaknesses and his strengths.

They can no doubt fault him (and not the quirks of the JRJ constitution and the prerogatives pertaining to governability) for a jumbo-size cabinet. They can fault him for wastage and they should. They can fault him for foot-dragging on independent institutions a la the 17th Amendment and they should. They can fault him for the slow process of investigations into attacks and murders of media personnel and they should. They can fault him for every job left undone or done halfway and they should.

Why? Well, he is the executive president. If this constitution is a tree, its roots, trunk, branches, leaves and fruit are all parts of the executive presidency. All bucks, then, stop at Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s table. All bucks, the bad and the good, the soiled and the sparklingly clean, the black and the white, the illegal and the legal, the negatives and the positives, the defeats and the victories.

No one has the moral right therefore to fault Mahinda Rajapaksa for the nation’s ills and in the same breath deny him credit for the nation’s victories. No one has the moral right to pass error on to Mahinda Rajapaksa and keep for him/herself the laurels, least of all part players in an overall strategy to defeat the LTTE which included as we all know the efforts of the security forces, the work on the diplomatic front, the intelligence units, the counter-propaganda moves, keeping powerful pro-LTTE players (local and foreign) at bay so that the troops could finish their job, preventing the economy from collapsing, maintaining political stability and obtaining the full backing of the citizenry. They will credit him for the world’s biggest hostage rescue operation and also for commissioning the de-mining and infrastructure development that allows for speedy resettlement of close to 300,000 people. They will complain about the conditions in IDP camps but recognize that lots more is being done for these people than for those in similar situations elsewhere in the world by countries economically and politically far superior to Sri Lanka.

All this is known. The voter can fault Rajapaksa for increasing the public debt but will be thankful that inflation is still manageable. The voter can point to Gotabhaya and Basil Rajapaksa and say ‘nepotism’ but will also be conscious that throughout history the rulers of this country have been forced to rely on closest kin to defeat the enemy because, simply, it is difficult to trust anyone and everyone. They will not forget however that the names Chamal, Namal, Shasheendra and other close relations were not even part players in this effort. They will not forget either that Mahinda Rajapaksa had the political skill to bring into the fold of the government sections of the United National Party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna. Sri Lanka Muslim Congress in addition to the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, the Kandurata Janatha Peramuna, Jathika Hela Urumaya, the TMVP and will probably obtain the support of a few TNA MPs.

The people know that Mahinda Rajapaksa has placed close kin in important positions but will acknowledge that he has a knack for picking the right man for the right job regardless of party colour or ideological persuasion, Sarath Fonseka included. They will not accuse him of being vindictive or harbouring grudges, but recognize that his forte has been in keeping the door open even for his worst detractor.

That’s Mahinda Rajapaksa. What of Sarath Fonseka? If ‘being known’ is Mahinda Rajapaksa’s edge, it seems that Sarath Fonseka’s advantage is that he is not known. Let me explain.

What do we know of Sarath Fonseka? Well, we know that he is backed by a lot of people who spared no pains to bad-mouth him when he was Army Commander, including a lot of people with a pretty nasty political history of backing the LTTE. We know that Fonseka claims he was belittled by the Rajapaksa administration. We know that he did not resign immediately when he was thus ‘belittled’ as one would expect of a man of high principle and self-respect. We know that even now as candidate he focuses on wrongs done to him. We know that he has so far shown a propensity to whine rather than showing any ‘presidentiality’ in the substance of his statements. But that’s not what I am talking about. I am talking about Sarath Fonseka the Hero.

Sarath Fonseka won the salute of the entire nation for directing the war effort in the battlefield. This is not to say of course that the Navy and Air Force did nothing of course. It was a combined effort. Still, it is always the ground troops that suffer the biggest casualties and therefore win public sympathy as accolade. Sarath Fonseka’s single-mindedness played a critical role. One can argue that this doesn’t mean anyone else couldn’t have done it. That is irrelevant. The man on the job was Sarath Fonseka, not anyone else. He was tasked, he delivered. Fonseka is a national hero without a doubt.

Still, we can’t escape the fact that the public knows nothing of Sarath Fonseka prior to December 2005 when Mahinda Rajapaksa defying all advice apparently including that offered by his predecessor appointed him as Army Commander. He counts approximately 35 years worth of service in the Army prior to this. He had lived for a little more than 50 years until that moment. What was his life like during this time, in and out of uniform? What is the true character of the man outside of executing responsibilities that come with position? How did he interact with his peers, his superiors and subordinates? How did he deal with opposition? What did he do or did not do to those he disliked? What is the magnitude of his magnanimity if he does possess such qualities? Was he vindictive? Ruthlessness can be seen as a virtue in battle because sentimentality can distract and harm, but did such ‘virtues’ spill outside the battlefield in his case? Did he harbour grudges? We need to know the man inside his military uniform. Who are his friends? Does he choose them for companionship, common interest or personal gain?

The truth is, the public knows little or nothing of Sarath Fonseka. And the public needs to know these things about all the candidates. I have argued elsewhere (‘Deciding with what we wish to be stung’, in the Daily Mirror of November 12, 2009 available online (http://www.dailymirror.lk/DM_BLOG/Sections/frmNewsDetailView.aspx?ARTID=67589) that the core qualities of a person will be augmented if he/she is crowned, especially when it comes to the office of Executive President in the JRJ Constitution. I argued thus: Pick a clown and you’ll get a lot of laughs; pick a slave to external interests, you’ll be further enslaved; pick a crook and you’ll be robbed clean; pick a man who has a nice smile and you’ll be smiling with him even if he does nothing during his tenure; pick a ruthless fighter and you can say goodbye to any kind of compassion.

Sarath Fonseka’s history may enhance his stature or it may take the gloss off his medals. He cannot hide behind ‘war hero’ for the entire length of his campaign and the thinking public should not allow him to either. It is incumbent on those who know the man to go public with their knowledge. The campaign will see a lot of ‘history’ coming out, yes, inevitably tinged with malicious intent. Mahinda Rajapaksa has been a victim of mud-slinging for several decades. Fonseka will have to learn to deal with it. On the other hand, there are questions he will be called on to answer.

For example, he will be and should be queried about the source of his spat with Wasantha Karannagoda; the ‘why’, the ‘from when’ and so on. He will be asked about the security detail he assigned to Parakrama Pannipitiya at the height of the war. He will be asked how a land grant of 10 perches was expanded to 25 and at whose insistence and who obliged. He will be asked about Keith Noyhr and Upali Tennekoon. And of course Lasantha Wickramatunga. Fingers will be pointed in all directions, but substantiation will be required. Given the nature of politics this is one positive in this campaign. Truths that need to be known all of a sudden have a better chance of being unearthed, never mind the reason.

The bottom line, however, is that we need the man behind the cut-out. Perhaps it will be to his advantage. Perhaps not. He is no longer Army Commander. There’s no serious threat to national security that warrants Fonseka’s character being protected against tarnishing at all costs. He is a player in a dirty game. ‘Hero’ is not an effective protection in these circumstances and it should not be either. He is being portrayed as ‘clean’ and ‘disciplined’. These claims will and must come under scrutiny in terms of his entire life, in the army and outside it, and not just in the past four years.

If indeed he is clean and disciplined, if he is not a vindictive, ruthless man who is wired in such a way that he would harbour a grudge for forty years, then indeed he would be a decent candidate if we were to ignore who his friends are. The point is, we need to know what the deal is. We need to know Sarath Fonseka from head to toe, from child, schoolboy and soldier to politician. We already know about Mahinda Rajapaksa. It is only fair that we know Sarath Fonseka. The people, after all, are better off when they have the opportunity to make an informed choice.