5th Column

Athuraliye Rathana hamuduruwaney,

I thought I must write to you since you are very much in the news these days, staging fasts unto death, and protesting against some governors and ministers continuing in office. You demanded that Aiyo Sirisena should sack them, and threatened to sacrifice your life if your demands were not met.

I must say that all this came as somewhat of a surprise to us, hamuduruwaney. That is because, over the years, we have known you to be critical and outspoken but we haven’t seen you act in a manner that was opportunistic and manipulative, and in a way that brought the saffron robe into disrepute.

Don’t get me wrong, hamuduruwaney. Most right-thinking people felt that the governors – Salley and Hizbullah – and minister Rishard, continuing to hold office was not in the best interests of the country, or indeed for their own community. However, the solution you suggested to that was quite drastic.

In fact, hamuduruwaney, what you were doing was threatening Aiyo Sirisena. You were saying, ‘You should sack them, or else I will kill myself by starving’. Honestly, when you say and do something like that, I don’t think you are being a good Buddhist, let alone an exemplary Buddhist monk.

What was even more strange, hamuduruwaney, was that you weren’t worried one bit about whether those two governors and the minister were guilty of what they were accused of or not. It seemed that, in your mind, they had already been found guilty because there were many allegations against them.

I know that there are some who consider you a national hero for what you did, but pardon me, what you did makes me quite uneasy, hamuduruwaney. Are we now supposed to dismiss people, just because one person thinks they are guilty, and threatens to fast unto death, unless they are sacked?

Some would even say that, after all the drama of last week, you brought yourself down to the level of others who have recently staged so-called ‘death fasts’. Those were cheap political stunts by equally cheap politicians and until last week, we didn’t think that you belonged in that category.

I am referring to Wimal who staged that ‘fast unto death’ protesting against Ban Ki Moon’s actions, and the Greens’ Palitha who did the same over children being refused admission to a school. It is of some consolation that you were not totally like Wimal – you didn’t have the luxury of Lemon Puff!

What is interesting is the message you were conveying: if someone is Muslim, they must be bad or dangerous – even if that had not been conclusively probed – and therefore they should be isolated and dealt with. By staging your fast, you were reinforcing this belief, whether you realised it or not.

You couldn’t have been unaware, hamuduruwaney, that while you were fasting opposite the Dalada Maligawa, people were staging marches elsewhere in the country supporting you. Their message was blatantly anti-Muslim, threatening them and asking us to boycott everything with any link to Muslims.

Wouldn’t it be quite fascinating, hamuduruwaney, if we could do that? Just imagine, we would then stop getting our oil exports from the Middle East and would have to revert to the era of bullock carts. Thousands of housemaids would also have to return from those countries, instead of working there!

The other question I have for you is hamuduruwaney, if your fast unto death was all about seeking justice and fair play and protecting the interests of our nation, why did you decide to act only now, at a particularly difficult time for all  of us, when we are looking over our shoulders for the next attack?

Why is it that, hamuduruwaney, you didn’t stage a fast unto death when Aiyo Sirisena went back on his promise not to run for a second term, despite solemnly promising one of your own kind – the late Sobhitha hamuduruwo – before he got elected, that he would definitely be only a ‘one term’ President?

As if that were not enough, hamuduruwaney, why did you not stage a fast unto death when Aiyo Sirisena unlawfully sacked his Prime Minister, appointed another for that job, and dissolved Parliament, and then had to undo all of those actions, when the Courts told him it was unconstitutional?

Why is it that, hamuduruwaney, you didn’t stage a fast unto death when the chap who held the purse strings for the Greens was caught red handed with his fingers in the till but was still brought back in a powerful and energetic way? Or, worse, still, when the Greens postponed all provincial elections?

If you are still looking for issues to stage death fasts, hamuduruwaney, because you are worried about our nation’s safety, you can do so again after the startling revelations from our ‘interdicted’ Police Chief. He says Aiyo Sirisena threatened him, asking him to take the blame for the Easter attacks.

Do you now realise why we are puzzled by your actions? You haven’t staged a fast unto death while all this happened, yet you stage such a fast now. Now that you have not only got what you wanted but got rid of all our Muslim ministers, the least you can do is give us an explanation, hamuduruwaney!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: If we applied your principle of having no dealings with anything linked to Muslims, our World Cup campaign would have been in disarray, hamuduruwaney. Why, we would have not played against Afghanistan and Pakistan and forfeited points to them. Instead, we won against Afghanistan, and the game against Pakistan was washed out – although I still feel we were quite lucky in both games!