5th Column
Unite the party into a powerful force
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My Dear Sajith,
I thought I must write to you to congratulate you because we were all told by the Green Man that you would be given “priority” when a decision is made regarding the next deputy leader of the Greens. It is a welcome announcement not only for you but also for all Greens!
I suppose you will argue that this is what you wanted all along and it has taken a long, long time for the Green Man to come to terms with that. If he had done this several years ago, it could have saved the Greens a lot of trouble — and saved it from quite a few election defeats as well.
Nevertheless, Sajith, I hope you realise that your tactics over the past few years have done a lot of damage to what they now call the ‘Unanduwak Nethi Pakshaya’. It will take much more than getting on stage with the Green Man at Passara and raising hands together to undo all that damage.
Don’t forget that the Greens also lost a lot of stalwarts because of your tussles with the Green Man. There were many who supported you — like Dayasiri, for instance — who finally left, unable to tolerate the step-motherly treatment given to them by the Green Man, simply because they were supporting you.
I also wonder how Uncle Karu feels right now. You proposed Uncle Karu for the top job but now it seems he has lost out on all fronts and must be feeling betrayed. But he is a gentleman and he has always said he won’t demand positions, so I suppose he will be happy if the Greens are united at last.
We all know that the Green Man has an awkward style of public relations but to his credit, when you were using television stations to cast doubts about his leadership and make snide remarks about him, he never uttered a word against you publicly. You must learn from that, Sajith.
You also have a lot to learn from your father, Sajith. When he started his journey in the UNP, there were many who opposed him but he stayed the course, was always loyal to the Greens and through sheer hard work proved to the party that he was indispensable to them, which is why he got to the top.
Compared to him, Sajith, there are many who believe that you are a young man in a hurry who is demanding the party leadership just because you are the son of your father. You will disagree with that, but the time has now come to prove your critics wrong by winning elections for the Greens.
You had said that the partnership between you and the Green Man will be similar to the one between your father and his uncle. That is easier said than done, Sajith. When you were still in your jungees, they went around the country conducting ‘satyagrahas’ for a few years before they came to power.
They took on the might of the Queen B’s rule and countered it successfully with imaginative tactics but it took them a few years to do so. You and the Green Man, on the other hand only have a few months to get your act together to take on the might of Mahinda maama’s well-oiled party machinery.
Of course, there are those who say that you are satisfied with what you have now been promised only because you believe that the Green Man will lose the next election as well to Mahinda maama, leaving the path clear for you to take over when that happens. Is there any truth in that, Sajith?
Sajith, while you should study how your father overcame the obstacles he faced from within his own party, I hope you will also learn not repeat the terrible mistakes that he made, especially after he rose to the very top. I am referring to his decision to sideline Lalith and Gamini, of course.
That led to the impeachment against him and it was that campaign that gave the momentum to the Blues who were at that time bickering among themselves and struggling to put up a fight. Looking back, it is a mistake that Greens are still trying to recover from, more than twenty years later.
As you know, you too still have opponents within the Greens and some of them are those who broke away with Lalith and Gamini. I hope that you have the foresight not to sideline them but to give them their due place and keep them happy, just like JR did, if only to ensure that the Greens stay united.
We wish you well, Sajith, not because we love the Greens any more than the Blues but because our country hasn’t got the opposition it deserves for the last twenty years and it is time that, even if we didn’t have a good government, we at least have a formidable opposition.
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: Time was when elections in Sri Lanka were a battle between the Senanayakes and the Bandaranaikes. The wheel has turned full circle and there may soon come a time when our elections will become a battle between two sons of two Presidents. Are you ready for that, Sajith?