5th Column

My dear Sajith,

I thought I must write to you to congratulate you on your appointment as the Leader of the Opposition and for leading the party which secured the largest number of seats from the opposition at the recent election, even if the ‘pohottuwa’ chaps stole your thunder and emerged easy winners at the election.

They will be gloating about the two-thirds majority they obtained and they have every right to do so. However, you too can be proud that you were able to form a new political party and, within a short period of a few months, amidst all the confusion of the Covid-19 pandemic, you won fifty-four seats.

I hope you realise that your real challenge starts only now. You would have heard Gota maama’s address to Parliament on Thursday. He has great plans. So it should be because we will be better off as a nation if all those plans work. However, to ensure that they do, we need a strong opposition too.

The main reason that you are in the opposition is because the Greens messed up when they were given the reins of power five years ago. Having Cheerio Sirisena in charge didn’t help but it is unfair to blame him for everything. Ranil and those around him are also responsible, probably even more.

In fact, it was only Cheerio Sirisena’s desperate efforts that prevented Ranil from appointing his good friend Arjuna as the Governor of the big bank for a second term. Just imagine what the fallout of that would have been? Cheerio Sirisena made life difficult for the Greens but the Greens had their faults.

You must be heartbroken to leave the Green party because that is what you would have grown up with all your life, from the days when your father was involved with it. Ranil has left you with no choice. He is still clinging on to what is now left of the Greens – the name, ‘Sirikotha’ and the ‘aliya’ symbol.

Your father would have told you that he had similar issues. He too walked out of the Green party in the early ‘70s and formed the ‘Purawesi Peramuna’ after differences with Dudley. That didn’t matter much because Dudley passed away and JR readily welcomed your father back to the Green party.

It must be said that whatever his faults, JR gave your father his due. He appointed him his PM – even if your father called it a ‘peon’s job’- and later endorsed him to run for the top job. Ironically, the same issue is playing out again, a generation later, but JR’s nephew is refusing to yield to his deputy’s son!

I am sure you must be quite annoyed about this but there is another way to look at this: unwittingly, Ranil is doing you a great favour. Just imagine, if he had allowed you to contest with the ‘aliya’ symbol, you would have contested as a single party- and that would include all of his loyal supporters.

If you did so, when you won some seats in each district, Ranil and some of his followers – such as those involved in bond scams and those held responsible for allowing the Easter attacks – would be elected – and you and the Greens would back at square one, trying to gain control of the party again.

You struggled to gain that control nine years ago. That was when the party last held a leadership contest. Ranil beat Karu for the leadership, you beat Ravi and became deputy leader and Daya beat Dayasiri as National Organiser. Still, Ranil appointed Ravi as ‘assistant leader’, whatever that meant.

Now, by contesting as a new party and doing quite well-  although some will say not well enough – you have got a team of people who have pledged their loyalty to you and have had enough faith in you to leave the Greens and join you. That should give you the strength to take your party forwards.

Some say that your party is nothing but the Greens in a different name. That too seems true. You need to change that image and convince voters that your party is different, that it cares about the ‘common man’, not just the rich; that it will listen to the majority community while not ignoring minorities.

That is what your father did in the mid-seventies. He, along with JR, worked tirelessly to take the Green party to the grassroots – and, combined with the mistakes made by Sirima – it paid off spectacularly in ’77. This will be a huge challenge for you but then, you have five years to do this.

While you should be following your father’s steps in these matters, you should also learn from his mistakes, Sajith. He failed to give Lalith and Gamini their due place and that nearly split the Greens at that time. Think about that when you deal with Navin, now that Mayantha is already with you.

We say all this not because we don’t want Gota maama to succeed. If he realises his ‘vision of splendour and prosperity’, we will all be better off. Still, for that to happen his ministers have to be kept on the straight and narrow- and for that, we need a strong opposition. So, wish do you well.

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS- You should be careful about who you accept from the Greens. Lucky and Rajitha were loyal and faithful to Ranil but when they realised the ship was sinking, they jumped. You have also taken Tissa on board. Whichever side he has been has lost for the past so many years. Think about that too, Sajith!