5th Column
Make them say “Yes he can”
View(s):My dear Green Man,
Please pardon me for not writing to you earlier because I know I should have — to congratulate you on becoming the PM once again. You are making a habit of this, aren’t you: being the PM when someone else is the Bog Boss? This is now that third time you are doing this!
This time though, I hope you last longer in the job. At first, you had to do it with Dearly Beloved after that horrible assassination and it was only a caretaker role. Then you did it while Satellite was the boss and that didn’t last because Satellite dissolved Parliament early and called for early elections!
It is funny, isn’t it, that the same Satellite now teams up with you to get you the job that she sacked you from? I have heard that politics makes strange bedfellows but in this case I am sure Mahinda maama will tell you that the more apt way of looking at it is ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’!
You have also replied people who said you would never lead the Greens to form a government again. You were smart enough to know that if you ran against Mahinda maama it would be a one horse race, so you did the next best thing by getting Maithri — and even JR would have been proud of your tactics!
Green Man, did you realise that your place in history is assured? Only Dudley and the Queen Bee have had the good fortune of being Prime Minister of this country thrice. But history will also record that you are also the only Prime Minister who didn’t win after contesting a presidential election!
Green Man, we hope that you will be third time lucky. There is no reason you shouldn’t be because your boss now is Maithri. He was able to defeat Mahinda maama because people trusted him and so far, he has kept his promise and remained a simple person — although it has only been a few days yet.
It was also good to see young Sajith and Navin going about their work in their new ministries. They seemed happy. It was nice of you to give them their due places even though one of them opposed you and the other’s father was your rival. I hope they have learnt to forgive, forget and work together.
Some appointments will always raise eyebrows, such as putting Ravi in charge of the purse strings. I suppose you wanted to keep him happy too, because he was upset when the Green’s Number Two job went to Sajith. We hope that Ravi will do an honest job of work and won’t be an embarrassment.
We are also glad to see some Blue chaps and those like Arjuna and Champika in your Cabinet though we are not certain whether you or Maithri picked them. They will provide some checks and balances and it would have been good if Anura sahodaraya was there too — that young man seems very sensible.
Although these must be very exciting times for you, Green Man, getting a government up and running, we can see that there are different demands from different people: some want all the promises fulfilled, others want corruption probed and then there are those complaining of revenge!
However, you must also be careful, Green Man. History tells us that, because you are a decent man, you expect others to behave in the same way. Remember, the last time you had this job, some wanted you to impeach Satellite so she couldn’t sack you but you didn’t? And that is exactly what she did!
After all, there is an election in less than a hundred days and it is still not clear how the Blues, Greens and the Reds will contest this election. They say that you will work together for now, contest the polls separately and then the majority party will form a government — and that sounds like a fairy tale to me!
Don’t forget that Mahinda maama, though defeated, doesn’t miss a chance to ‘address the nation’ be it outside the Dalada Maligawa or from a window sill at Medamulana — and he makes upaasaka ammas cry too. Given half a chance, he will return — and he may not give you the safe departure you gave him!
We see that you are racing towards this ’100-day’ deadline. That is as it should be. If, at the end of it, you and Maithri can at least make the independent commissions work and start talking to our fellow citizens in the North, you would have achieved a great deal — and you may win the election too!
Green Man, we wish you well. Just as much as we are grateful to Mahinda maama for delivering us from terrorism, we need to deliver this country from the nepotism, corruption and lawlessness that enveloped it thereafter, because of him. If you can do that, people will no longer say ‘Ranilta bey’!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: I think I know why you and Maithree didn’t take up residence at Temple Trees, even though Mahinda maama had spent the peoples’ money to convert it to a virtual palace. You don’t want to be woken up suddenly in the middle of the night to find Mohan Peiris lurking in the corridors, do you?