5th Column

Gnanasara haamuduruwaney,

I thought of writing to you this week to congratulate you on your appointment to chair a Presidential Task Force on having ‘one country one law’. You must be thrilled with this news, especially when you have been chosen over and above many others who have been professionally trained in law.

The first question that came to mind on hearing of your appointment was why we need a ‘task force’ to ensure ‘one country, one law’? Is someone trying to tell us that we have different laws for different people in this country in a not so subtle way? I thought that was something we knew already!

I know that many are criticising your appointment, but we mustn’t forget that the appointment has been made by Gota maama himself, who is ‘our hero who works’ or ‘weda karana apey viruwa’ who we know has done the best for us or, as he himself likes to say, ‘api thamai hondatama keruwe’!

Gota maama has enough legal pundits around him. For instance, he could have chosen that Emeritus Professor of Law who is in Cabinet, even though he is a bit long in the tooth now. He would love to dabble in something like this, instead of overseeing Foreign Affairs, over which he has no control.

Instead, Gota maama has chosen you because he wants to change the ‘system’ which is what we elected him to do. So, he selects you, haamuduruwaney, a person with absolutely no knowledge of the law – except, of course, your own controversial encounters with it, resulting in charges against you.

Those charges are worth recalling since you are now tasked with the job of restructuring our legal system to become ‘one country, one law’. Correct me if I am wrong, haamuduruwaney but I believe one was for drink driving. The other was when a Magistrate convicted you of contempt of court.

The first one puzzles me more. Driving under the influence of alcohol is an offence. That is what you were charged with. However, what about the offence of drinking alcohol as a person wearing a yellow robe? Awasarai, haamuduruwaney, did you receive any punishment for breaching the fifth precept?

As for the second offence, you should thank Cheerio Sirisena because it was he who pardoned you just a few months before he left office. If he did not do that, you would still be behind bars because you were serving a six-year jail sentence. That fellow Sirisena can never get anything right, can he?

Anyway, here you are chairing a task force on ‘one country, one law’. I would be a bit worried about that if I were you. That is because of ‘one shot’ Ranjan. As you well know he too is now serving a four year sentence – two years lesser than you, in fact – for the same offence of contempt of court.

Haamuduruwaney, if your task is to come up with an arrangement where there is ‘one country, one law’ and if you have been pardoned for the offence of contempt of court, shouldn’t he be pardoned too? And if that happened, what would prevent him from releasing more taped phone conversations?

Talking of pardons, there is the issue of Duminda too. He was convicted for murder and had his sentence reviewed several times, even by the highest court in the land. If he can then be pardoned and if it is ‘one country, one law’, will all our convicted murderers be pardoned, haamuduruwaney?

We also have Premalal, better known as ‘Choka malli’ who has also been convicted of murder but continues to attend Parliament and enjoy its privileges. If he can do that and if it is ‘one country, one law,’ surely people such as Ranjan should be allowed to attend Parliament too, haamuduruwaney?

Then, we recently had a series of cases where the Attorney General began dropping charges levelled against important people such as Basil maama and Karannagoda. Since you will be in charge of ‘one country, one law’, you can also arrange for proceedings against Champika and Rishard to be halted!

I suppose your task would be to have ‘one country, one law’ for all communities and religions in our Paradise but I notice that certain communities are not represented in your ‘task force’. Surely, that wouldn’t be a problem for you, haamuduruwaney, because you must know how they feel and think.

We recall how you intervened in a minor incident in Dharga Town in Kalutara seven years ago.

With this ‘task force’, it will be well and good if you could indeed enact ‘one country, one law’ for all citizens of Paradise regardless of who’s who they are or to which community or religion they belong to. If not however, to quote your own words, it will be ‘aba saranai’ for all of us, haamuduruwaney!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: The Sinhalese language has a witty saying for times when a judge decides on cases he should not be hearing. Now however, with you being appointed to chair the ‘one country, one law’ task force, there is a whole new meaning when you say ‘naduth haamuduruwangey, baduth haamuduruwangey’!