5th Column

My dear Vraie,

I thought of writing to you after hearing that the first budget of the ‘maalimaawa’ chaps at the CMC was defeated by 3 votes. You spoke after that, close to tears, telling your fellow councillors that what was really defeated was not the ‘maalimaawa’ chaps’ budget, but the budget of their conscience.

Vraie, you shouldn’t be shocked by what happened at all. In fact, it was quite predictable. It is quite surprising the powers that be in Pelawatte didn’t see it coming. It was a defeat of your own making. It is also not entirely your fault because I guess you have to follow the dictates of the Pelawatte pundits.

Those pundits should have known that the laws governing local councils were such that it is extremely difficult to gain a simple majority in any council because of the way in which seats are allocated, using a combination of the first-past-the-post system and proportional representation.

That happened at the previous local election held before the poll in May. With a two-thirds majority in Parliament, the ‘maalimaawa’ chaps could have changed the laws to allocate a few ‘bonus’ seats to the party with the most seats. They didn’t, though they did amend the laws for the poll to be held.

You, and many other heads of local council in the ‘maalimaawa’ camp are now paying the price for that mistake. Their budgets are getting defeated one after another. This is what happens when a party that has been in opposition for 6 decades gets to rule. They can oppose but they struggle to govern.

I daresay that your Pelawatte pundits made another mistake which was also avoidable. Remember what your party told us before the big elections last year? They said there would be no ‘deals’ with other political parties because they were all corrupt and only you ‘maalimaawa’ chaps were clean?

Had you stuck to that principle your party repeated endlessly last year, you wouldn’t be in this mess either, Vraie. When the results of this year’s election came in and you found yourself a few seats short of a simple majority in many councils, you could have allowed other parties to take control of them.

You would have ‘lost’ control of those councils despite being the single largest party. Still, you would have won the respect of the people because you were sticking to your principle of not engaging in ‘deal’ politics with parties that you yourself described as corrupt. Again, you chose not to do that too.

Those principles were abandoned for political gain. You did deals with chaps from various parties including the ‘telephone’ chaps, Jeewan’s party in the hills and in some instances with ‘pohottuwa’ chaps! Your lame excuse was that you weren’t dealing with those ‘corrupt’ parties, only individuals.

Having done that, your ‘maalimaawa’ chaps insisted on secret votes to elect chairpersons for councils. You may have succeeded in doing that, but what that meant was we didn’t know what kind of ‘deals’ you had entered and with whom. Even your election in Colombo was on that basis, Vraie.

What you at the CMC, and your ‘maalimaawa’ pundits didn’t realise was that by your actions, you were setting a series of time bombs that would go off when the time was right, which was when the budgets were presented. That is exactly what is happening now, so none of you should be surprised.

What it also does is that, with each budget defeat in a local council that hits the headlines, it gives an impression that the ‘maalimaawa’ chaps are losing their grip on power, even though that may strictly not be the case. This, coupled with repeat episodes of Ranwala’s escapades, doesn’t augur well.

That is why, you shouldn’t be crying about your budget defeat in public. Despite your defeat, you can carry on regardless for the next two years, according to the law. So, you can do pretty much what you want and show the citizens of Colombo that you can deliver, despite a ‘defeated’ budget, Vraie.

I worry about the ‘telephone’ chaps too. Mujibur acts as if the telephone party won the presidential election and that he has become Prime Minister. The fact remains that the ‘telephone’ party is yet to win a single election and polled just over a fifth of the votes in May. They still have a long way to go.

So, Vraie, you and your comrades in the ‘maalimaawa’ need some tuition about how to govern after not winning elections outright. Soon, you might find an expert tuition master for that job: Uncle Ranil is hinting at leaving the leadership of the Green party. Of course, that is only if he really does that!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Be careful about history repeating itself, Vraie. The only other leftist mayor of the CMC, Dr N M Perera from Sama Samaja Party was voted out of office after two years on a motion submitted by the Greens. And guess who voted for that motion? Preme (Snr) who was then in the Labour Party!