5th Column

My dear GL,
I thought I must write to you because you are in the news once again, telling us what we should do and what we should not to do in making constitutions, just when we had heaved a sigh of relief thinking that we had seen the last of you, after you didn’t make it to Parliament at the last election.

Of course, even after 20 years in politics, you still believe that using big words and long sentences will impress people, so you continue in your own inimitable style forgetting that your audience is the average citizen — and not a class at the law faculty of a university. Still, we can live with that.

I am sure you must be wondering why we find your latest explanations amusing, if not annoying. After all, you are a professor of law trying to educate the ignorant masses and they should be listening to you, shouldn’t they? But that hasn’t quite happened, so please let me try and explain why.

When you first entered politics, it was at the invitation of Satellite when she asked two professionals who were also two ‘Lakshman’s to join her team, the other being that lovely gentleman who went to earn a name for himself as the country’s best foreign minister, before being killed by the Tigers.

During that time, Satellite promised to abolish the executive presidency, which she called JR’s ‘bahubootha viyavasthaawa’ within six months, but she didn’t do that, did she? And, if memory serves me right, we didn’t hear you shouting from the rooftops and complaining, did we, GL?

Then, the Greens won an election although Satellite was still the boss but by that time you had done a somersault that would have made Thondaman blush. You remained in office as the Green Man’s right hand man and advisor on all things important — and the Green Man fell for your academic charms.

He asked you to draft a ceasefire agreement with the Tigers which you did. For the next two years, we heard you singing its praises and telling us how wonderful the Tigers were. By the time the ceasefire fell apart and we were back at war, the Green Man had been labelled a ‘traitor’ by Mahinda maama.

But, by then, you had done another somersault, joined Mahinda maama’s team and were telling us why we should discard the ceasefire and defeat the Tigers on the battlefields. And sure enough, when Mahinda maama won, you were by his side too, holding on to another top ministerial job!

The real test of your integrity came after Mahinda maama won the war against the Tigers and then, on the strength of that, won the elections in a landslide. That is when he amended the constitution to do away with the independent commissions and also allowed him to run for the top job any number of times.

GL, you are now screaming that the ‘proper’ procedure is not being followed in changing the constitution, but we didn’t hear you complaining then, did we? Mahinda maama begged, borrowed and stole MPs to get a two-thirds majority to do so, but not a word of protest did we hear from you!

And why is it that we didn’t hear any of this talk about ‘proper procedure’ when the Field Marshall who was then a General was summarily court martialled or worse still, when the Chief Justice who was you protégé at your university was impeached because she wanted to do her job properly?

Instead of protesting, GL, you were busy gallivanting to the United Nations in Geneva year after year, trying to salvage what was left of our country’s reputation after being accused of war crimes. You didn’t do a good job of that either, so much so that people began calling you ‘Geneva Losing’!

It is also very funny, GL, that you of all people should be telling us now that the proposed new constitution will threaten the unitary nature of our country when you proposed a ‘union of regions’ in one of your draft constitutions. Trying to fool all the people all the time doesn’t always work, GL.

I am not sure whether you remember this, GL, but even Mahinda maama promised to abolish the presidency. Maithri did the same and he seems to be the only one who is actually trying to get it done, so let us all give that a try. Until then maybe you, being a professor, should take a sabbatical!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: Those who expected ‘yahapaalanaya’ to deliver instant results are now complaining that not much is being done but they can at least be happy that you have not crawled in to that camp to advise Maithri. As they say, those with the lean and hungry look, they think too much and they are dangerous, aren’t they?