5th Column

My dear Ravi,
I thought I must write to you, firstly because I don’t think anyone wants to write to you these days but also because you seem to be in the news although you are just a backbencher who was once powerful who is now trying his best to become powerful once again- in other words, just like Mahinda maama!
If anyone thought you would just fade away after resigning from your top job of minding the country’s purse strings, you have proved them wrong. You are very much in the limelight these days, what with all this noise about the ‘Bond Commission’ and the findings that are coming to light there.

Ravi, I am not sure whether you will remember this – because you seem to have such a poor memory – but when you resigned, you told us that you did not know that the apartment you were living in, which you said was rented by your wife, was paid for by that chap Arjun. You wanted us to believe you.
Now, I don’t know what you discuss with your wife, Ravi, but when you stay in a plush apartment where the monthly rental is nearly one and half million rupees and you are not paying for it, I would have thought the natural reaction is to ask your wife, “Mela, how are we paying for this place?”

It seems as if you didn’t ask that question, or, if you did, she said, “oh, don’t worry about that, a friend of our daughter is paying almost one and a half million rupees a month for this” and you didn’t think twice about that and didn’t even bother to ask your wife who this mysterious benefactor was.
We do recall that you were interrogated at the Bond Commission about your dealings with this chap. You said then that you only knew of him as a friend of your daughter and had met him ‘once or twice at family gatherings’ – hardly a reason for him to want to pay your rent for you, don’t you think?

Now, the Bond Commission tells us this week that you had 84 telephone conversations with him over a two year period and there were three dozen messages exchanged between you two. That’s a lot of talk with someone you knew only in passing as your daughter’s friend, don’t you think, Ravi?
They also tell us that your wife has spoken to him more than 300 times over the same period. If we are to believe everything that you have told us, you must be one strange family. If you talk so much to people you met only once or twice, just imagine how much you must be talking to your real friends!

This chap must also be quite a character because he seems to have talked not only to you but also to many others who are your colleagues in Parliament. What surprised me was, that list included sporty Dayasiri – I suppose he could have been trying to clarify what ‘Disce Aut Discede’ really meant!
Now, Mahinda maama’s ‘pohottuwa’ boys are onto this in a flash, asking the Bribery Commission to investigate whether the MPs who were called benefited in some way through this chap. That is a valid question because, who knows, he may have been renting apartments for them too, for all we know.

Ravi, I know it has not been an easy time for you. Why, only last week you had to watch Mangala deliver his maiden budget speech with the entire country’s attention focussed on him for several hours – while you must have been sulking in the back benches thinking, ‘that could have been me’.
When you think about all this, Ravi, I hope you realise that Maithri is a lot smarter than you give him credit for. You got him elected thinking that he would go after Mahinda maama and his men. Those inquiries are progressing at a snail’s pace while the Bond Commission is carrying on at express speed!

When you left your top job a few months ago, I am sure you had some hopes of making a comeback. I hate to tell you this, Ravi, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be so sure about that now. All I can say is that if you do return, we can be quite sure that the Greens wouldn’t be making a return to power soon!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: I am not sure whether it has got something to do with the name, but this is not a good time for Arjunas. This Arjun chap will have to answer a lot of questions as would his father-in-law, Arjuna who was minding the Big Bank then. Then, the ‘other’ Arjuna, Captain Cool, also appears to have lost his cool over the recent petrol shortage where he too has a lot of explaining to do!