5th Column

My dear Field Marshal,
I thought I must write to you because you have somehow managed to hit the headlines again – and most people don’t know what to make of it. I am not sure whether you, like Mervyn before you, believe that any publicity is good publicity, but it certainly doesn’t look like that right now.

What has caused all this fuss are two statements that you made. First, you said that your successor in the army has committed crimes during the war and that you were prepared to give evidence against him. As if that were not enough, you then went on to call a certain Buddhist monk a ‘mad man’.

Pardon me, Field Marshal, but I am a bit confused by all this. That is because, for many years after the war, when the so-called ‘international community’ were accusing us of war crimes, we strongly denied those allegations. Those accusations, though not talked about much now, have not gone away.

If memory serves me right, at that time you too were at the forefront of denying those claims made by those such as Channel 4 in Britain. You told the world that we were waging a war against terrorists who were using human shields and that any civilian casualties were accidental and not deliberate.

But here you are now saying that Jagath, your successor, committed crimes during the war. What’s more, your comments come only after some people filed a law suit against him in far away Brazil where he was posted as ambassador by Maithri. Then, he had to pack his bags and leave in a hurry.

Field Marshal, I know you have been through a lot in your career, enduring a bomb blast that nearly killed you and then prosecuting a war against the most ruthless terrorist organisation in the world, only to be sent to prison because you dared to challenge Mahinda maama at the elections.

Since then, you have made a comeback- and what a comeback it has been. Not only have you been pardoned, you have also been decorated with the highest military rank conferred on a Sri Lankan soldier. You are back in Parliament thanks to the National List. You have been a made a minister too.

It would have given you even more satisfaction to know that while you prospered, those who opposed you have face hard times. Mahinda maama is a mere MP now. Justice Wije, the chap who tried to ridicule you by calling you a ‘vel vidaaney’ has been booted out of the Cabinet by his own party.

All this took some time. You have now been a minister for more than one and a half years. If Jagath did commit crimes as you say he did, why didn’t you take it up with Maithri and the Green Man as soon as you took office? Or, better still, why didn’t you act on it, when you were his commander?

We know that many politicians say strange things when a microphone is thrust in front of them by a reporter. For instance, Rajitha makes a habit of it. We also know that you still speak as if you are addressing soldiers in the barracks, comparing people to various animals such as the ‘kalavedda’.

Even then, Field Marshal, what you have said has now been picked by the Eelam lobby around the world. They are saying that ‘even the Sri Lankan Army commander during the war is saying crimes were committed during the war’. Ah, talk about cutting off the nose to spite your face!

Then, you call a Buddhist monk a ‘mad man’. Now, Field Marshal, so-called ‘mad men’ come in all shapes and sizes: there are politicians, military men, businessmen, cricket bosses and even doctors and lawyers among them. Those with a real mental illness will prefer not to associate with some of them!

So, by calling a prominent monk a ‘mad man’ what you have done is allowed your enemies to call you a traitor and an enemy of Buddhism. They are having a field day condemning you. Some people even want to bring a motion of no-confidence against you. Is all this really necessary, Field Marshal?

Field Marshal, we appreciate all that you did, putting your life at risk and winning a war that nobody could. We also know that you underwent enormous hardships because you challenged an emerging dictatorship. People respect you for all that, but just so you know, you are now testing their patience!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: Being a military man, you must have heard it being said that war is too serious a matter to be left to the generals alone. Similarly, politics is too serious a matter to be left for politicians alone. In this instance however, it seems that that politics is also too serious a matter to be for the marshal alone!