President Mahinda Rajapaksa described former Chief of Defence Staff General (Retd) Sarath Fonseka as a fool in a wide ranging interview with Ravi Velloor of the Singapore based Straits Times.

The President said that Fonseka had come to see him on November 16 and when asked whether he was going to contest the Presidential election, he said he had not yet decided. The President had then advised Fonseka that one day his political backers will drop him and leave him in the lurch.

The President had said that he could have stopped Fonseka from contesting by simply sitting on his retirement papers until after nominations closed, but that he did not do so because he did not want people to say he was frightened to face Fonseka.

Asked whether the President could not accommodate Fonseka in the national reconciliation he was planning, the President had asked rhetorically, "If I pardon him what about Army discipline? What about the courts martial of other soldiers? This is British law…. Fonseka himself put thousands of soldiers under courts martial. At one time the figure was 8,500…"

The President also revealed in the interview that Fonseka had wanted to increase the strength of the Army to 450,000, after the end of the war, citing a threat from India. But he had told Fonseka that he will look after threats from external forces.