{"id":42489,"date":"2015-03-20T22:50:26","date_gmt":"2015-03-21T04:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42489"},"modified":"2015-03-20T15:00:46","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T22:00:46","slug":"devaluing-the-field-marshall-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/03\/20\/devaluing-the-field-marshall-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Devaluing the Field Marshall title"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><span class=\"itemAuthor\">Courtesy\u00a0 The Nation<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Rumors are afloat that following the victory of Maithripala Sirisena at the last presidential election, former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka would be rewarded for support extended by being made Sri Lanka\u2019s first Field Marshall. Fonseka, was promoted to the rank of \u2018General\u2019 after the defeat of the LTTE. Other service chiefs were also promoted. Fonseka later fell foul with the then regime and was stripped of his rank.<\/p>\n<p>Two questions are being asked. First, what has Sarath Fonseka done since being made General to deserve a further promotion?\u00a0 Secondly, did Fonseka defeat the LTTE all by himself, i.e. without the support of the Navy and the Air Force?<\/p>\n<p>When Fonseka was stripped of his title, all promotions were immediately put on hold.\u00a0 If that freeze is being removed to benefit Fonseka, it is argued in certain quarters, then the promotion of others in the Navy and Air Force also should be considered.<\/p>\n<p>Those well versed in military affairs observe that rewarding a military person for services rendered in the political arena would set a very bad precedent and further exacerbate the already serious problem of politicizing the military. It would devalue the title of \u2018Field Marshall,\u2019 they add.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy\u00a0 The Nation Rumors are afloat that following the victory of Maithripala Sirisena at the last presidential election, former Army Commander Sarath Fonseka would be rewarded for support extended by being made Sri Lanka\u2019s first Field Marshall. Fonseka, was promoted to the rank of \u2018General\u2019 after the defeat of the LTTE. Other service chiefs were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}