5th Column

My dear Mahinda maama,
I am writing to you because I know this is a difficult time for you and despite leading the nation for ten years and winning a war against the most ruthless terrorist organisation in the world, I know you must be struggling to come to terms with the idea of a son being arrested and sent to prison.

These days you must be confused because it is as if Yoshitha’s arrest is the most important issue in the country — not celebrating our independence, not the rising cost of living and not even our cricket team’s tour to India. I think that is why we should discuss these matters that have arisen recently.

Mahinda maama, we can all understand that you are upset at what has happened and I heard you say that this is all nothing but a political witch-hunt. You said such acts of political revenge should be restricted to politicians and not their children. You had wanted them to arrest you instead of your son.

Being a lawyer who passed your Law College exams in the proper manner, you know that there is no law that allows parents to be arrested for the alleged offences of their children although, during your time, the Field Marshal’s son-in-law’s grandmother was charged when the Police couldn’t find him!

Mahinda maama, you also need to be careful about what you say these days. Why, you had said that you had intervened to have the daughter of another leader released when she allegedly “got caught” committing an offence because you considered the services rendered to the country by her late father.

I heard the lady has already written to you saying she did nothing wrong. I don’t know whether you realise this, but what you are saying is that you interfered in what the Police was doing when you were the boss — and the next thing you know, you too could be easily detained on these charges!

Besides, I don’t think we have laws which says the ‘services’ to the country by a person’s parents will be considered when charging someone for an offence. And, just imagine what kind of message it would send to young Daham who is already trying to sneak his way in to the United Nations!

Mahinda maama, you should be careful about those around you because what some of them say and do reflects on you, because they all say that they want you back as the big boss. If you look at most of those who visited Yoshitha at Welikada, you feel that most of them should be staying there anyway!

Then there is Professor Geneva Losing. After slandering everything related to the United Nations he now wants to meet their human rights boss when he is in town. Please ask him not to speak on Yoshitha’s behalf because he will lose that argument too. Ah, doesn’t he speak with a forked tongue?

Then we have ‘100-rupee’ Udaya who wants to impeach Maithri for singing the National Anthem in Tamil. He says India, with all its languages, has its anthem only in one language. That is true but this learned gentleman doesn’t know that it is not sung in Hindi, the majority language but in Bengali!

With friends like these, Mahinda maama, I don’t think you need enemies although you seem to have a lot of them. There will also be those who want to form separate political parties just so that they can be leading figures in that party- instead of being junior partners in a coalition led by the Blue Party.

These were the same people who were boasting that none of the corruption charges made during the election campaign have been taken to court. Now, when that is happening, they are screaming from the rooftops saying these are acts of political revenge, so it looks like they were asking for trouble!

It just makes you wonder where all these people were when the Field Marshal who was then a General was dragged away like a common criminal and jailed or when the then CJ was humiliated and impeached in double quick time. Perhaps these people hadn’t heard of ‘political revenge’ at that time!

You also ought to realise that the more than six million people who voted for a change wanted all these allegations inquired in to because frankly, the stories we hear are mind boggling. And if nothing wrong has been done, you needn’t worry because now, unlike those days, judges do the right thing.

Perhaps what we do not want is for people to be arrested and charged and then for everything to be dropped the moment you say you will retire from politics because there is a strong suspicion that might happen. Always being a fighter, you wouldn’t want that too, would you, Mahinda maama?

It is indeed a sad day when we see tears in the eyes of someone who wiped away the tears of a nation by defeating terrorism. But then, I think it is important that everyone- including those in power now-realise that however great your achievements are, you don’t have a blank cheque to do as you please.

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: Speaking of tears, there were tears in many eyes when the National Anthem was sung in Tamil on Independence Day. It is such a small gesture with such a huge impact that you wonder why it was not done until now. Now, Colvin can finally rest in peace and say, ‘one song, two nations; two songs, one nation’!