5th Column
Right person, wrong person
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My dear Satellite,
I thought I should write to you because there are whispers that you are back in business. You have been seen around town, talking to people and making your presence felt, all in anticipation of the big contest that is to be declared in the next few days.
I heard that you are part of Sri Lanka biggest ever manhunt: the search for the ‘common’ candidate. Although he (or indeed, she) is called the ‘common’ candidate, he seems to be quite uncommon because everybody is having a lot of difficulty in finding that person!
Now, Satellite, why I thought of writing to you about that is because there are some people who are whispering your name as this ‘common’ candidate. With all due respect, I sincerely hope that you would not entertain such an idea, not even in your wildest dreams!
I am not sure whether you know this, people in this country do remember what our politicians did when they were in office. More importantly, they also remember what they did not do. That is why you should not be seeking to be the ‘common’ candidate, and I will explain why.
If memory serves me right, 20 years ago you were swept into office after a wave of political assassinations that robbed the country of some of its finest leaders. At that time, although you were an unknown quantity, you were in the right place at the right time — and you had the correct surname too!
It was also a time when the people were tired of seeing the Greens in office for so long and behaving as if the entire country was theirs for life. So any change was thought to be better than that — and you certainly promised change, the most important among them being to abolish the executive presidency.
Not only did you promise to abolish the presidency, you also set a time frame for it: six months. Based on this promise, the rathu sahodaraya who was contesting in that race withdrew. Twenty years and one President later, Satellite, we are still waiting for the executive presidency to be abolished!
Of course, it is not all your fault, I blame the people too. At the end of your first term of office, you had not kept your promises. Your Peoples’ Alliance, or the ‘PA’, was being called the ‘Parakkui Arakkui’ government. Your biggest development project was building a ‘flyover’ at Ragama!
Despite all this, the people voted for you a second time. They had to, because you came before us, just after that bomb blast and just before the election, one eye heavily bandaged and wiping away your tears. They were probably reminded of how your mother came crying before them many years ago.
Anyway, we also remember how, at the end of eleven years of being the boss, you wanted to stay on for another year even though your second term of office had begun one year earlier. Even after that, your plan was not to retire, but to return to Parliament as Prime Minister.
The man you handpicked and placed in the Chief Justice’s chair went against you and paved the way for Mahinda maama to come to office. Chief Justices have a habit of doing that, don’t they? The rest is history which will judge you about what you promised to do, what you did and what you didn’t do.
So, Satellite, pardon me, but most people will find it quite amusing if you are at the forefront of a campaign to abolish the executive presidency. If you couldn’t do it after eleven years in that job, what assurance do we have that you won’t forget to do so yet again?
Anyway, we are now told that Uncle Karu will be the ‘common’ candidate, after all. I suppose that is not a bad choice, if everyone else could support him. I know many parties in the opposition would, but can we be sure that Uncle Ranil and Sajith would put their best effort into the race?
At the last elections too, we had what we thought was a common candidate. Unfortunately he was a military man who expected everyone to follow his orders. He couldn’t quite create the impression that he was expected to and ended up losing his rank and his pension-and gaining only a prison sentence.
So, Satellite, we do wish you well in your efforts in finding a ‘common candidate’. I sincerely hope that you are motivated by genuine concerns — and not because Mahinda maama treated you shabbily after getting the top job. We have all heard what they say about a woman scorned, haven’t we?
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: You used to call JR’s constitution a ‘bahubootha viyavasthawa’ but you didn’t hesitate to use it to your advantage, Satellite. My advice to you is to take another leaf out JR’s book and do what he did: stay completely out of politics, after retirement. That way, people may even have something nice to say about you, after they begin to compare you with your successors.