5th Column

Aiyo Sirisena,

I thought of writing to you because this will probably be the last time we will write to you as the man in charge. Soon, you will be the retired big boss who promised so much and delivered so little. Now, your days are really numbered: thirteen more to go before you yourself have to go.

Aiyo Sirisena, you are a living testament to the fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Four and a half years ago, you were a simple man who spent his entire life in politics, going as far as becoming a minister and a secretary of a major political party but otherwise being in the shadow of greater men.

That was when good fortune came your way. For many reasons, people had tired of Mahinda maama and his family and wanted change. The Green Man didn’t have a chance, so Satellite and Sobhitha hamuduruwo chose you to run against him after Nimal Siripala was offered the task and said ‘no’.

You won, confounding everyone. In case you have forgotten- which I am sure you have, considering your actions- you promised not to run again for the top job. You also said that, at the end of your term, you would go gracefully, back to cultivating your beloved paddy-fields in Polonnaruwa.

Instead, you tried your level best to stay on. You went to court and asked whether you could stay for one more year. They said ‘no’. Until the last minute, you wanted to run for the top job again. You pulled out only when it became certain that if you contested, you would get only a handful of votes.

There were occasions when we wondered whether you had lost your marbles. There was that time, just before the last general election, when you made an address to the nation and said that the one person you will not appoint as PM is Mahinda maama (or should we call him Mahinda seeya now?).

A few years later you sacked the man who got millions of his party’s votes for you and installed the man who you campaigned against, making allegation after allegation that his was the most corrupt regime that ruled this country- this being the same person you vowed never to appoint as PM!

That was because you thought you could get in to Mahinda maama’s good books, come to some arrangement with him and stay on in the top job for a second term. However, that plan never quite worked out because Mahinda maama couldn’t get the support of a majority in Parliament.

Then, you really lost the plot. You dissolved Parliament. The highest court in the land ruled that you had violated the Constitution. You had to eat humble pie and reappoint the Green man as PM. Your place in history is assured, Aiyo Sirisena- as the only leader who violated the Constitution!

You were elected because of Green party votes but you demanded the Blue party leadership. In four and half years, you have succeeded in doing what people like JR couldn’t do for decades: you have completely destroyed the Blue party that SWRD founded, Sirima nurtured and Satellite protected.

After the Easter attacks, you passed the buck to others but you hadn’t held meetings of the Security Council for many months. When you did, you didn’t want the IGP or the PM to attend. You said you couldn’t return from Singapore because you couldn’t find a flight but the flights were not full!

You spoke of corruption during your election campaign and promised to close the airport at midnight to prevent crooks from leaving the country. Yet, when you appointed commissions to look in to corruption, you asked them to inquire into the past four years only- not what happened before that!

Perhaps the few things that you did which benefited us was insisting on getting to the bottom of the big bank bond scam and enacting the 19th amendment. However, you have now disowned the latter, saying it was a ‘mistake’- simply because it didn’t give you the dictatorial powers you now wish for.

In your last few days in office, you have been uttering strange words. First, you want to implement the death penalty for drug trafficking after forty years, despite worldwide opposition. Yet, now you also want to pardon a person given the death sentence for murder. Is there a deal in that too, Aiyo Sirisena?

It is ridiculous for you to say now that you are ‘neutral’. You sabotaged the Greens, destroyed the Blues and want to join the Purple brigade. You have parked the country on the edge of a downward slope and have now switched to ‘neutral’ gear. So, we are all hurtling downwards at breakneck speed!

When you got the top job, we thought you would be like Dearly Beloved: a simple man chosen for a purpose, to change the political culture of that time. Dearly Beloved resisted calls from some Greens to form a government after they had lost and when his time was up, he retired quietly to Pilimatalawa.

In contrast, you have got a house in Colombo and a ‘package’ worth millions- a far cry from the paddy-fields of Polonnaruwa! You want to remain in Parliament too, because you are asking people to resign, so you can sneak in. Haven’t you still got the message, Aiyo Sirisena, for God’s sake, go!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS- You may recall Wimal mocking you during the last election campaign calling you ‘Aiyo Sirisena’ and looking for you saying ‘ko mey Sirisenaya’ (‘where is this Sirisena?’). You should know that, after four and half years of your leadership, the entire nation is now waiting to say ‘Cheerio Sirisena’!