Fonseka garnered 40 percent to his former commander-in-chief’s
59 percent at the Jan. 26 poll, which prompted the former general to accuse the
president of rigging the vote and then sue to have the results nullified.
Election observers pronounced the vote free and fair.
“The five-member bench has dismissed the petition,” Fonseka’s
attorney, Upul Jayasuriya, told Reuters. “General Fonseka instructed his
lawyers to file an appeal at the international courts in Geneva.” It took less
than a year for the career infantry officer to fall from the height of glory as
the army commander who led the May 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers in a
three-decade civil war, to a stinging election defeat and later prison.
Fonseka, who won a parliamentary seat in an April election,
lost it after being sentenced to 30 months’ hard labor when a court-martial
convicted him of misappropriation of funds while serving as army commander.
An earlier military tribunal that found him guilty of
engaging in politics while in uniform had already stripped him of his pension
and rank. Rajapaksa had made him Sri Lanka’s first serving four-star general
for his role in the victory.
The general and the president fell out quickly after the war
over what Fonseka said was a sidelining to a newly-created post with no powers,
chief of defense staff, and false accusations that he was plotting a coup.
Fonseka, who was injured on the battlefield and in 2006
narrowly survived a Tamil Tiger suicide bombing, quit the military in November
and became the rallying figure for a group of opposition parties united solely
to beat Rajapaksa.
The opposition accuses Rajapaksa of persecuting Fonseka
politically, while the government says the general clearly broke military laws.
Fonseka still faces two civilian criminal cases.
