5th Column

Victory after victory and things beginning to go awry
My Dear Mahinda maama,
I thought I must write to you because just when you seemed to be settling in to your job, the going has got tough, and all so suddenly too.
It is hard to imagine that it was just over the last two months that everything seemed to be going just right for you: the Tigers were talking to you in Geneva, the local government elections were a landslide, there were more UNPers willing to cross over than you could take, Satellite was in far away England, Anura was singing your praises and the only bothersome factor was an occasional comment from a rathu sahodaraya complaining about this, that or the other…

And how quickly that has changed, Mahinda maama? The ceasefire is off for all intents and purposes, there are pregnant suicide bombers roaming the streets, a claymore mine claims a half a dozen lives every day, everyone expects war to break out tomorrow and fuel prices and bus fares are also on the rise, just to make life difficult for you at the top…

Of course, you can't blame Velu for all this either. It was he who decided that you should win by barring all those voters in the North and East from going to the polls in November, so he must have thought that you were a better bet than the Green Man, as far as he was concerned. And, to be fair he did inform all of us that his patience was running out, when he delivered his birthday speech last year.

So, Mahinda maama, at the same time it is now your responsibility to see that matters don't get any worse from here onwards. After all, the presidency may have changed hands, but we are reminded of the saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same' because officially at least, the ceasefire is still on, Solheim and the Norwegians are still the brokers and no one even talks of a unitary state anymore! So, while all your promises with which you seduced voters at the election remain unfulfilled, the threat of war is also looming large.

This is not to say that the masses have suddenly turned against you, Mahinda maama. In fact, many still think that by ordering retaliatory strikes after the attack on the Army commander, you have sent a clear and simple message to Velu that fire will be met with fire, a decision that the Green Man may not have taken.

Anyway, Mahinda maama, if you would take a piece of advice on these matters, a good practice would be to put your house in order at least in the South so that people respect you for what you do and I'm afraid that is not happening.

We have cabinet ministers openly flouting your instructions about overseas trips, others are allegedly implicated in visa scandals, the prisons have turned into luxury hotels for some and the government can't even get an examination paper marked correctly-and nothing is apparently being done about any of these issues.

And then, just when we all thought you were behaving like a good democrat, you also throw caution to the winds and take it upon yourself to appoint those commissions responsible for the most important services in the county, a sure sign that absolute power can lead to many problems in the near future.
Very soon, especially if war breaks out and the cost of living spirals all these issues will be laid at your doorstep, Mahinda maama and people will begin to blame you for all our problems. So, you will need to be careful in what you say and what you do just to make sure that you at least fare better than your immediate predecessor -- which is not asking for much, anyway!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: Of course, if you want to look at the brighter side of the picture, you can always remind yourself that the Green Man is still the leader of the Greens and the Leader of the Opposition and that while that remains so, there is no real need to worry about your job security.

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