Wistful longing to be a dictator!

My dear Satellite,

I thought I must write to you after reading some public comments you had made recently, where you had said that you should have become a dictator for at least six months to bring in a new Constitution for the country, and then reverted to democracy.

Excuse me, Satellite, but I thought all the leaders we have had under what you famously called the bahubootha viyawasthaawa have been dictators to some extent or other, the only exception being the late Dearly Beloved who only got the job by default anyway.Why, the Old Fox used to boast that the only thing he couldn’t do was to make a man into a woman and he was probably right too. He arbitrarily sacked thousands of workers who went on strike, held a Referendum instead of a general election and imprisoned opponents such as your husband on flimsy charges. And perhaps worst of all, he had your mother’s civic rights taken away. So, wasn’t he a dictator?

Then, when we all thought that the Old Fox was an insult to democracy, he was succeeded by someone who didn’t bother to use the law to deal with his opponents. True, there were insurrections in both the North and the South but he had become so much of a dictator that his own party men impeached him. By the time he himself perished, we were thinking the Old Fox was probably more democratic!

Then there was Dearly Beloved and I think we don’t give him the credit that is his due. Although some, like the Mahaveli man wanted to bend the rules to cling on to power, he held a clean election and when you won, gracefully gave way and retired, thereby avoiding a lot of trouble.

It was then that you took office, and to hear now from you that you should have become a dictator for six months surprises us all, Satellite, because most of us believed you were a dictator for eleven long years!

For starters, you began by promising us that the bahubootha viyawasthaawa will be repealed and the executive presidency will be abolished within six months-it is now a long time since that promise and the executive presidency is now even stronger than what it was. But here you are, saying you wish you were a dictator!

Then, it was during your time that criminal charges were slapped on people who criticised you in the media and cases were heard in courts to try and send them to jail. To be fair by your predecessors, Satellite, they may have been autocrats to some extent, but even they didn’t try that. And here you are now, saying you wish you were a dictator!

Then, when the Greens toppled your government and won the general election, you behaved like a sulking little child, refusing to swear in Seeni Bola and the learned Tilak; the former because you simply despised him and the latter because you wanted to keep the Defence portfolio to yourself. And here you are now, saying you wish you were a dictator!

Of course the crunch came sometime later when you suddenly and arbitrarily took over three portfolios and handed them over to your party men even though the Greens had the majority in Parliament. It was something no one else had done before. But here you are now, saying you wish you were a dictator!
Then, you solemnly promised the Green Man you would not dissolve Parliament before the due date because he had won an election that gave him the right to govern the country for six years. Unfortunately the Green Man was too much of a gentleman and he believed you. You dissolved Parliament shortly afterwards and the Green Man is still paying for that blunder. And here you are now, saying you wish you were a dictator!

And your parting shot was to try and govern for an extra year, saying that your second term of office began one year later than it actually did. The See Jay you appointed disagreed and the rest they say is history. But here you are now, saying you wish you were a dictator!

So, Satellite, this is why you surprise us all when you say that you should have been a dictator for at least six months. Thank God you didn’t, because if you did, it could well have been like the six months within which you promised to abolish the executive presidency; it is now sixteen years since you made that promise and the bahubootha viyawasthaawa is still going strong!

Yours truly,
Punchi Putha

PS-You have also said that you are writing your memoirs now. My advice to you is to wait for a few more years until you-know-who finishes his second term. Remember, judging from past experiences in this country, the moral of the story is that however bad you think a leader is, you just have to wait till his or her successor finishes to realise how good that leader was!