How green could you be! Even we poor mortals could see through!

By Rypvanwinkle

My Dear Green Man,

I thought I must write to you after seeing you return recently to Temple Trees, to meet Mahinda maama for yet another discussion. To say the least, Green Man, I was surprised, as I am sure were many others…

Surely, Green Man, even you couldn’t have forgotten that the last time you two met like this, you smiled for the cameras and announced to the entire country that you had signed a memorandum of understanding. A few weeks later, Mahinda maama had stolen seventeen of your MPs and reduced your party to nearly nothing!

And that is why many people want to know whether you hadn’t learnt a lesson about how Mahinda maama operates and whether you are not, once bitten, twice shy. And just a few days after you met Mahinda maama last week, sure enough there was your recently appointed organizer for Matara-that cricketer chap-crossing over to the Blues!

Anyway, Green Man, we were told after the meeting that you had guaranteed your full co-operation to implementing the 13th Amendment involving the provincial councils as a means of solving the ethnic issue.

Of course, I am not saying that you should have opposed the provincial councils just for the sake of opposing them, but I thought you had decided long ago that they were not enough to settle the grievances of the minorities-which is why you offered something more at the last presidential election campaign, and lost. So, when you now say you support the provincial councils, it leaves everyone a bit confused, Green Man…

Then, we were also told that you had asked Mahinda maama to implement the 17th Amendment and appoint the Constitutional Council to which he said a loud and definite ‘no’. Surely, Green Man, if you had asked anybody on the street-without going all the way to Temple Trees- whether Mahinda maama would appoint an independent body that would oversee all important government appointments, they would have told you that this would never happen and not to waste your time meeting Mahinda maama about it!

So, what are you left with now, Green Man? A few dozen MPs of your own, a ‘jana rala’ that did not become the political tsunami it was supposed to become, a few visits to the ‘pola’, a poster campaign that could have learnt a lesson or two from the rathu sahodarayas, a ‘jana duka nivana aragalaya’-and little prospects of coming to power in the near future.

If I were you, Green Man, I would stop plotting and conspiring with everyone under the sun to bring down this regime or reduce its majority in Parliament. After all general elections are only two years away and at the rate the cost of living is rising, Mahinda maama would find it very hard to sell himself by that time, unless of course, some accidental mortar falls on that chap Velupillai.

Remember your uncle JR, Green Man? He was not the most charismatic of people when he began work as the party leader after Dudley’s death, but within four years he had the green party running at full steam at the grassroots level that resulted in that famous landslide win in ’77. And that grassroots level support is precisely what you lack, Green Man…

But I suppose you know all this. And yet you seem to think that you can lead the country by default-by being there when Mahinda maama blots his copybook with blunder after blunder and ruins the economy. All I can say is, Green Man, don’t count on it. The man will not go without a fight-and a good one at that!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS-By the way, you will have to decide about being so friendly with Satellite and Avamangala too. Don’t forget that it is they-and not Mahinda maama-who ruined your government in 2004!