Will Bonapartist Foneska outgrow Sri Lankan democracy?
M K Bhadrakumar warns that former Sri Lankan army chief General Sarath Fonseka’s entry into the country’s political arena might alter the geo-political equations in South Asia permanently. When a tea sapling was brought into Ceylon — present-day Sri Lanka [ Images ] — in 1824 from China and planted in the Royal Botanical Gardens, the British had no commercial interests in mind. It took another forty years before a plucky Scotsman planted the first seedling, which blossomed into the famous Ceylon Tea and became today’s unshakeable pillar of Sri Lanka’s economy. The ‘Emerald Island’ has obscure tales to tell. That is why when a swash-buckling army chief by the improbable name Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka abruptly discards the uniform and plunges into the country’s steamy politics, it becomes no simple matter. Sri Lankan democracy may never be the same again. Bonapartism isn’t altogether new to the region. Pakistan’s Ayub Khan showed the way back in the 1950s. Bangladesh followed
