His world is in pieces—from sworn enemies to sworn friends!

By Rypvanwinkle

My Dear Minister Hisbullah,

I thought I must write to you after hearing what happened to you over the past few weeks, finally resulting in your appointment as a minister in the newly created Eastern provincial council. Of course, I need to congratulate you first because I think you must be now holding the world record for the Minister with the most number of portfolios because they tell me that you have been appointed as Minister of Health and Indigenous Medicine, Social Welfare, Probation and Child Care Services, Women's Affairs, Youth Affairs, Sports, Information Technology Education, Co-operative Development, Food Supply and Distribution of the Eastern Province!

I suppose you will have to print an extra-large letter head when you begin your work in the east just to accommodate all the portfolios that you have been allocated. Wouldn’t it have been better to appoint your good friend Pillayan as the Chief Minister and call you, the ‘minister of everything else’ instead of giving you this long, long title, Minister?

But what is more interesting is not the portfolio you were given, Minister, but how you got to become a minister. If I remember right, it was only a few days ago that you were sending letters to the Governor of the East saying that you and two others would function as an ‘independent’ group within the new council, weren’t you?

I suppose you had every reason to be angry because when Mahinda maama and his Basil malli convinced you to contest with them, they were ready to offer anything in return for your services-and that would have included the chief minister’s job. All you had to do was to get the most number of councillors to support you and the job was yours, they would have told you.

And so you would have thought it was better to leave your brethren because you were always playing second fiddle to Rauf with whom you didn’t see eye to eye most of the time, anyway. Well, no one can blame you for being a little power hungry and opportunistic because that is what most politicians are meant to be these days!

But, my dear Minister Hisbullah, maybe you should also have known better. After all, Mahinda maama may be unable to win a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council for us, but he wins the Nobel Prize for divide and rule because he has divided the greens, the reds, the blues, your own party and even the Tigers, so you should have thought twice if you were thinking of outwitting him…

Believe me, Minister Hisbullah, no one was really surprised when he called on Pillayan to be the top man. He was only repeating what he had already done to the reds, he got their votes and then told them that they would have to toe the line or else, leave. The reds, of course, left but I don’t think you have any other option but to just grin and bear it now…

So, Minister Hisbullah, for now at least you will have to be content with the eleven portfolios that have been given to you, even though you will have to function under a former child soldier who now talks as if he is the greatest democrat since Abraham Lincoln! So, best of luck!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha

PS-Now that everyone is complaining about Sri Lanka losing its seat at the United Nations Human Rights Council, I was just thinking whether you and Pillayan couldn’t have helped Mahinda maama on that issue. After all, you were able to win the eastern province for him, weren’t you? I’m sure that had you used the same tactics, obtained Uncle Dr. Mervyn’s help and got Dayananda to oversee that election as well, Mahinda maama would have got a convincing ‘mandate’ from that election too!