5th Column

My dear Gota maamey,

I thought I should write this letter to you, after the entire country waited for several days for a letter from you. That much anticipated letter finally arrived on Thursday. While we as a nation look to the future, I am sure you must be reflecting on the events of the past few days.

You must be sad that, after getting the most number of votes a presidential candidate ever obtained in this country just over two and a half years ago, then enjoying a near two-thirds majority in Parliament, you had to leave surreptitiously with a mob baying for your blood at the gates of President’s House.

I don’t think we should be debating whether you are right or wrong at this time, Gota maamey. After witnessing last Saturday’s events, it is fair to say that, as much as we love to hate our public figures, we haven’t seen that much of anger directed at one person so far, except maybe against Prabhakaran.

Few will doubt that you may have had the best of intentions when you took office. However, they were betrayed by a few unwise decisions of your own, your strategy of putting military men in charge of key sectors and of course, allowing your family and a few other cronies to continue their old habits.

You were elected when ‘Rajapaksa’ was the most marketable brand in Sri Lanka. Since then, Basil has cluelessly presided over an economy where the only growth was in his bank balance, Namal was playing water sports while citizens died in queues and Mahinda maama’s tactics backfired.

Some of your own decisions didn’t help. You appointed a racist in robes to set up a ‘one country, one law’ policy. You pardoned Duminda, appointing him to head a state agency. Convicted of extortion, Aprasanna remained a minister. Slowly, the ‘Rajapaksa’ brand became the most hated in the country. 

Finally, you failed to judge the magnitude of the ‘aragalaya’, thinking that last Saturday’s protest will attract a few thousand agitators who could be dealt with using tear gas and water cannons. You misread the public mood. You didn’t know that hatred against the ‘Rajapaksa’ brand had now become a tsunami.

It is also ironic that you came to power on a campaign which focused on the Easter attacks, heaping blame on the Muslim community and promising more national security. Yet you had to flee and take refuge in the Maldives, a Muslim country. In the end even your own security couldn’t be guaranteed.

It is also amusing that your other campaign slogan was to punish those responsible for the Central Bank bond scam. In the end, you appointed Green Man, the chap who presided at the time of the bond scam, as your PM; and then arrived in Singapore where Mahendran, the bond scam boss is hiding!

It was weeks before you left that you appointed the Green Man as your PM. By virtue of that, he now sits in your chair.

You aren’t the only leader who left our shores after falling from grace. The only other military officer to lead us, Sir John, too left our land after an election loss and lived in England. Still, he returned and donated his home where a university now stands in his name – and you were once in charge of that!

However, you will sadly go down in history as the only leader in our post-independence era who had to flee to escape from the wrath of the masses after being forced to resign. This is not a time to dwell on your misfortune and condemn you, but I do hope this will be a timely lesson for our next leaders.

You may be unpopular now, Gota maamey but, with the exception of DB, every President was more unpopular than his or her predecessor. Preme was more unpopular than JR, Satellite more than DB, Mahinda maama more than Satellite and Aiyo Sirisena was more unpopular than Mahinda maama.

So, Gota maamey, for all the criticism that is heaped on you these days, I feel history’s final verdict on your brief time in charge is not certain yet. That will depend, to a large extent, on who succeeds you. Unfortunately, it is the much despised ‘225’ who will be making that crucial decision.

We who remain in ‘Paradise’ await that contest anxiously as it determines whether the ‘aragalaya’ succeeds in restoring not only our economy but also democracy and law and order. As for you, you can relax, thinking of ‘palamuwa mawbima, devanuwa maala divaina, thewanuwa singappooruwa’!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: We haven’t lost our sense of humour despite all this. They say that your resignation letter was the most talked about letter since Piyal wrote a letter to Nanda in Gamperaliya. Then, they now call you ‘Runner viruwa’, and when Wimal called you our Lee Kuan Yew, I think he meant Flee Kuan Yew!