My Dear Old Girl Lilibet,
I thought I should write to you not only because you are celebrating the diamond jubilee of your coronation this week but also because your country has been in the news over here recently-and for all the wrong reasons, I dare say.
But first things first, so congratulations on completing sixty years on the throne. And what a coincidence it is to have you celebrating your diamond jubilee when we, in this little newspaper of ours, are celebrating our own silver jubilee!
Yours is a great achievement and I am told that in your own country only your great- great-grandmother, Queen Victoria has surpassed you. In our own region in recent times though, I believe the former Emperor of Japan and the present King of Thailand have reigned for a longer period.
I know some of our kings may have ruled for longer than you have done and a chap by the name of Pandukabhaya apparently ruled us for seventy years! Even now, there are others who hope to reign for that long and you know who I am talking about, don’t you?
But, Lilibet, old girl, I am sorry to say that all that joyous ‘jubilee’ feeling has been spoilt by your representative here, a chap by the name of John Rankin. He has opened a can of worms by trying to tell us that we should reduce the presence of our military in the North and East.
I am not sure how good your memory is now Lilibet, because you are pushing eighty six but if you remember correctly, we over here became a republic forty years ago almost to the day when this Rankin fellow made his remarks-although that ‘anniversary’ passed virtually unnoticed.
It is as if this Rankin chap is unaware of that. He talks as if he is still the Governor General of Ceylon and wants to dismantle our Army camps in the North and East. Surely, Lilibet, if he had the brains of a baby ant, being a diplomat, he shouldn’t have said that even if he felt that way.
Why has this Rankin chap got a bee in his bonnet about troops being in the North and East of our country, especially when some Eelamists are still trying their level best to divide Sri Lanka even though the Tigers were annihilated three years ago?
If we follow this Rankin fellow’s advice and withdraw our military from the North and East, Lilibet, those Eelam propagandists will be setting up camp there and we will have another civil war on our hands before you could say ‘Prabhakaran’!
Why, Lilibet, you are the monarch of all you survey and you still have troops in Northern Ireland and even in faraway Falkland Islands, don’t you? I’m sure there are no imminent security threats in these regions, but you haven’t pulled out all your troops, have you?
Just imagine, Lilibet, what it would be like if our High Commissioner in London went public with a suggestion of withdrawing your troops in Northern Ireland. Wouldn’t your chaps have dragged him by his ear and put him on the next SriLankan Airlines flight from Heathrow?
So, how is it that people like Rankin are able to get in to your Foreign Service, Lilibet? Since he is supposed to represent you, I would have thought they would have hired someone with a little common sense, some decency and at the very least, the stiff upper lip that you are famous for.
I know good help is hard to find these days, Lilibet. That is probably why smart people no longer seem to be leading your government as well. We recall how you visited us thirty years ago and then Lady Thatcher did so three years later to inaugurate the Victoria dam. Ah, those were the days.
Since then, unfortunately, it has been downhill. Why, we even had that Gladstone fellow trying to peep in to our polling booths and was promptly given marching orders. This Rankin chap should have been dealt with in the same way, Lilibet; it is chaps like him who give you a bad reputation.
Then, of late, your prime ministers have also been constantly nagging us about human rights and trying to tell us how to fight our war. And because we ignored your advice and somehow won our war against terror, they seem to resent our success.
In contrast, Lilibet, just look at the places your chaps chose to interfere with: Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya for instance. Your chaps may have installed puppet regimes in these countries, but they are still in a mess, with people dying every day. It seems that is what this Rankin chap wants!
Now, don’t get me wrong, Lilibet. We do still have enormous respect for you as a person especially for standing tall with your dignity intact even when members of your family were involved in scandal after scandal. Yet, the chaps running your government are a different lot.
We don’t intend to spoil your celebrations, Lilibet, but we hope that those in your government will at least now wake up to the fact that we are no longer your colony-not even as much as you chaps are America’s unofficial colony, doing everything that Uncle Sam wants you to do.
So, despite Rankin and his uncalled for ranting, we still wish you well and hope to see you once again when you should be visiting us for the Commonwealth Summit sometime next year. We hope you will have the courage to attend and say ‘no’ to all those who will try to convince you not to visit us!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS-Since all your countrymen are looking forward to the Olympics in London, it is indeed a pity that ‘war crimes’ is not an Olympic sport. If it was, America would have won the gold medal, your chaps would have won silver and maybe France, after all its efforts in Libya, would have taken the bronze!
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