5th Column
Uva smiles: Bigger tests ahead boy!
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My dear Sajith,
I thought of writing to you to offer my congratulations when I heard that you have been appointed as the Deputy Leader of the Greens. I know that this was something that you had to fight hard for, so you must be a happy man now but I hope you realise that the struggle is not over — it has only just begun.
You know that after the Greens were voted out of power 20 years ago, they have remained in the opposition for almost all of that period, except for a brief two and a half years when they formed a government while Satellite was still the big boss.
The Greens were dealt a big blow when they did not support the war effort and Mahinda maama was successful in defeating the Tigers five years ago. It meant that the Greens would be confined to the opposition benches for a long time to come.
That was also the time when you began to make demands for the leadership and your squabbles with the Green Man were becoming ugly. I am sure you still think that your demands were reasonable and they were necessary to reform the party, but your campaign also significantly destabilised the party.
That allowed Mahinda maama to hold election after election in the provinces and inflict defeat upon defeat on the Greens. It was reminiscent of what JR did to the Blues in the ’80s, after he deprived the Queen Bee of her civic rights and ensured that Satellite and Anura were fighting for the leadership.
With each successive defeat of the Greens, its vote declined even more. And, faced with the prospect of wasting the best years of their lives in the opposition with no prospect of gaining power, many Greens, both young and old, were enticed by Mahinda maama to join the Blue camp.
Some will say that, along with the Green Man, you have to share the blame for some of this. When you fought with the Green Man, most of those battles were in public, through television stations and other media, instead of being conducted behind closed doors.
That hurt the party even more because voters shied away from voting for an opposition party whose leaders were fighting with each other instead of fighting the Government. To his credit though, the Green Man never resorted to attacking you in public. He is too much of a gentleman for that.
I am sure you have heard that in politics there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. I hope you keep that in mind with regard to Ravi and Mangala in the next few months as you take on the challenge of defeating Mahinda maama and the Blues at the big elections next year.
You have already said that you and the Green Man would work as a team, just like how JR and your father did. Indeed, there are similarities between the two ‘partnerships’ but JR and your father campaigned together for a few years to defeat the Blues. You have only a few months left to do so.
I am not sure whether you would remember this, Sajith, because you would have been a little boy at the time, but JR and your father criss-crossed the country with a massive ‘satyagraha’ campaign in the mid-seventies, to create a wave of public opinion against the Blue government at that time.
I don’t know if the Greens will have the time — or the organisational capacity — to do so. For a long time now, the Greens have been a Unanduwak Nethi Pakshaya which hoped to win simply by waiting for the Blues to become unpopular. As the results in Uva showed, that won’t happen automatically.
And speaking of Uva, Sajith, it is amusing to see the Greens celebrating as if they won that election. Of course, it was a relief to almost defeat the Blues in the Badulla district, win three electorates and get more than forty per cent of the vote after many years — but that is still a far cry from winning, isn’t it?
You should also realise that, now that they have been given a scare in Uva, the Blues will try every trick in the book — and a few outside it — at the next elections. It is your job to try and ensure that the Greens have the strength to counter these tactics at the big elections. Are you prepared for that?
Sajith, you have been appointed vice-captain of the team but despite a Man-of-the-Match performance by young Harin, you lost the Uva match. Yet, that was only a T20 game and it doesn’t really matter. You should now try and win the two Test matches, instead of blaming it on the ‘hora’ umpire later!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha.
PS: You talk about history repeating itself with the Green Man and you being like JR and your father. To take it one step further, Lalith challenged your father and his protégé Ravi is now challenging you. I hope you don’t repeat the mistake your father made and try to banish Ravi, just like your father banished Lalith. After all, that is a mistake from which the Greens have still not recovered completely from, nearly 25 years later!