My dear General,
I thought I must write to you, even if some may find fault with me for calling you a General now and even though the chances of your getting to read this are remote, because I don’t think they take particularly good care of the library at Welikada.
I know it has been a long march from Vellamullivaikkal to Welikada but the days ahead will no doubt give you time to reflect on what has happened in the recent past and what got you to where you are now.
They tell us that you have been found guilty of some misdemeanours and that is why you are in jail. We know that you may have your faults, but General, I think most people don’t think that this is quite the way to deal with it.
I am sure you must be finding it a little odd that you are in jail while KP is treated like the goose that lays the golden egg, even if KP must be having quite a few golden eggs that he has stashed away when he was directing operations for the Tigers.Then there is also Karuna-who was even punished by the Brits for travelling on a forged passport-who is a parliamentarian and his rival in the East, Pillayan who is a Chief Minister. Of course, General, they may have been terrorists but they were smart enough to know their limits: they didn’t run for Presidency!
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I am sure you must be wondering whether it was wrong to run for Presidency. Well, Rohana Wijeweera ran for Presidency and a chap called A.J. Ranasinghe who said he would drink soup made out of the slippers of a President also ran for it, and we even had people like Siddhalepa veda mahaththaya and a Buddhist monk running for Presidency, so I suppose you would have thought that a General running for Presidency is not quite out of order.
But the problem was General, some of those who supported you perhaps used you to some extent. The Greens knew they didn’t have a ghost of a chance if they put forward their own leader- who had criticized the war efforts-against the Commander-in-Chief who won the war, so they were quite happy to field you instead.
As for the Reds, they did genuinely support you but again that was because you were better than any of the candidates they could have fielded from among their own sahodarayas. Of course, you were even better than the ‘other’ Sarath, who for all his bravado refrained from taking the plunge. Now had he done that, I am sure we would have seen the spectacle of a CJ being put behind bars for some alleged offence or other!
Having done what you did I am sure you must also be wondering whether the Reds and Greens will stand by you now. Well, at least the Reds are and although the Greens are still making all the correct noises, I am not so sure whether they will be with you in this, in the long run, beset as they are with their own problems which seem to be never ending.
Of course General, you did miss your chances too. At one point the Greens did invite you to join their camp and if you had done that you could have been a leadership contender in the Green camp today-and then imprisoning you would have been a little more difficult and would have had a greater impact.
Even more appalling is the fact that people who are supposed to represent responsible sections of society-the clergy, the media, the judiciary- maintaining a deafening silence on this issue. We must wonder whether they believe that in fact you are guilty or whether they just do not have the guts to stand up and be counted.
As things stand now General, the road ahead is long, hard and narrow. The bitter truth is that all the forces who want you free-including the Reds and the Greens- are now weak and they don’t seem to be able to muster enough support for your cause.But being a person who has been hailed as the ‘best Army Commander in the world’ and for a man who risked life and limb every day for the past twenty five years, I am sure you have the strength to withstand the challenges that lie ahead.
Of course the irony is that people in this country are able to set out from home each morning knowing that they would return safely in the evening because of what you did and the sacrifices you made-including risking your life-but you are now behind bars and cannot enjoy that kind of freedom. Sad though it is, that is the way it is likely to remain, at least in the months to come!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS-I hate to say this, but Velupillai Prabhakaran would surely be having the last laugh from his watery grave in the Nanthikadal lagoon, wouldn’t he? After all finally, even after death he has succeeded in dividing this nation, hasn’t he? |
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