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‘Anaatha’ from now on
View(s):My dear Channa Jayasumana,
I thought of writing to you this week because you seem to have set a record of sorts, becoming the first former minister to be evicted from his official residence. I don’t know whether there were others before you who suffered the same fate but if there was, I can’t recall anyone, certainly not recently.
Of course, setting records in politics is nothing new to you. You must hold the record for being the Minister of Health in Paradise with one of the shortest periods in office – if not the shortest – holding that much desired position for just three weeks last year before Gota maama absconded in a hurry. 
Your eviction is also interesting in so many ways, Jayasumana. Most importantly it is so because you claim you are not the typical run-of-the-mill politician. You say you belong to a new generation: young, educated, professional, not corrupt and having integrity – and a doctor and professor, to boot!
It is also not that this eviction order happened suddenly. You were supposed to vacate your official residence when you lost your ministerial portfolio. That was over one year ago. You overstayed your welcome until a secretary to a ministry plucked up the courage to file action against you in courts.
Correct me if I am wrong, Jayasumana, but we first heard of you as being a member of ‘Viyathmaga’. That was supposed to be a group of learned professionals set up for the purpose of guiding Gota maama, inexperienced as he was in politics, so he could lead all of us to ‘prosperity and splendour’!
The expectation was that people such as you who were young, supposedly not corrupted by being in politics for years, also being educated and functioning as professionals in your respective areas, will bring about the ‘system change’ that everyone was craving for. So, millions voted for Gota maama.
Pardon me, Jayasumana, I am not questioning your professional credentials, but we didn’t hear you utter a single word of protest, despite being a Professor of Pharmacology, when that charlatan Dhammika came up with this concoction of a ‘peni’ and offered it as a cure for the coronavirus.
Again, despite being a doctor, you thought silence was the best policy when Eliyantha suggested to throw ‘holy’ water into rivers to control the virus. Pavithra followed those instructions but fell ill with the virus and poor Eliyantha himself passed away after contracting it. So much for ‘Viyathmaga’!
Then we also saw a very different, vicious and vindictive side of you. You were one of the first people to suggest that Shafi, that doctor from Kurunegala, performed unwanted procedures on Sinhalese women to make them sterile. As it came from a medical professional, many people believed that.
Maybe you thought that was clever of you. What it did was sow the seeds of communal discord. It also helped Gota maama obtain a record mandate at the election. What we forgot in the meantime was what a panel of medical experts said later: What you alleged was simply not medically possible.
We also remember, Jayasumana, how you behaved when you were acting for Pavithra when the lady fell ill with Covid. It was under your watch that policeman Shani was transferred back to prison hospital, two days after emergency heart surgery despite pleas for him to remain in a better hospital.
As a doctor, one would think that, you knew of the risks of that decision more than any other politician. Or is it that being a doctor, you were more aware than most about the risks of that decision and that is exactly why you did what you did? Of course, only your conscience can answer that question.
What goes around, comes around or as we locals say, there is a ‘karumey’. That is why Doctor Shafi was recently exonerated from charges against him and re-instated. Policeman Shani was also acquitted from charges against him. While all this happened, you were evicted from your residence!
To return to the issue of eviction, I also just realised that you were no longer with the ruling types. You parted ways with the mainstream ‘pohottuwa’ chaps and joined the other professor, GL, Dullas, Charitha and their lot, perhaps wanting to convey the impression that you are a group of intellectuals.
I don’t know about the others, Jayasumana, but what you did in the last few years have cast a shadow over your claim to be an intellectual, though you may still be a professor. By being in their camp and being evicted by a court of law you are hurting this new group’s chances too at the next election.
You may have heard that some in Parliament are planning to make laws to expel those who bring that place into disrepute, after Ali Sabry Raheem’s gold smuggling saga. Now, if someone thinks that you too brought Parliament into disrepute with your eviction, you can be evicted from that House too!
Yours truly,
Punchi Putha
PS: If memory serves me right, Jayasumana, there was a time when you were invoking the name ‘Naatha’ quite often. Now that you have been evicted under a court order, maybe you can get some divine help from those quarters, or else you will be well and truly ‘anaatha’ from now on!
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