5th Column

My dear Diana,

I thought of writing to you this week after noticing that you are in the news again. It is somehwat like hearing about our cricket team because the first question that comes to mind is “what disaster is it this time?”. Anyway, after hearing all about you, I thought I shouldn’t be referring to you as ‘Lady Diana’!

The latest we have seen of you is getting into a spat with a member of the ‘telephone’ party within the corridors of Parliament. You claim he tried to strangle you, although we did see you lashing out with that very ladylike weapon, your handbag.  That forced you to rush to hospital and seek treatment!

We do not wish to pass judgment about who is right and who is wrong in the incident which has gone viral on social media. Who knows, that may be left to a judge in due course. However, what can be said is that the language you used in that incident was not very ladylike and rather unedifying.

What is interesting is that you seem to equate insults directed at you as insults directed at womenkind. We do agree that the secretary of the ‘telephone’ party once referred to you in rather derogatory terms. That was only slightly less disparaging than the infamous insult hurled by Tissakutti to Rohini.

However, your defence of that was worse than the offence. You threatened to strip him of his trousers and make him wear your saree. You said that he may one day end up getting slapped by you. Pardon me, Diana, doesn’t that itself insult females by implying that being dressed in a saree is demeaning?

Whatever it is, you have come a long way in a short time. Just a few years ago, you were the secretary of a little known party, the ‘Apey Jathika Peramuna’ with a number of members that could fit in to a three-wheeler. At that time, who would have thought you would be making headlines in this manner?

Fortune smiled on you when Sajith, looking for a way to escape from Uncle Ranil, needed a party of his own for his political survival. You stepped in, offered your party which was re-christened to become what is known as the ‘Sajabey’ today. In return, you were offered a plum ‘National List’ slot.

That honeymoon period didn’t last long, though. Just a couple of months after that, you defied the party to vote for the 20th Amendment that gave Gota maama near dicatatorial powers, saying that you believed he wouldn’t misuse those powers. Well, we now know how that fairytale ended, don’t we?

After you stabbed ‘Sajabey’ in the back, Gota maama rewarded you for your treachery by appointing you a state minister. The ‘Sajabey’ in turn decided to expel you from the party and that matter is still pending before courts. That was when Gota maama had to flee and Uncle Ranil took over, overnight.

It didn’t take long for you to get into Uncle Ranil’s good books. He appointed you state minister for tourism. The minister was young Harin, another ‘sajabey’ defector. He probably thought that, with both originally being from ‘Sajabey’, you would get along well. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

You and Harin don’t see eye to eye. There was a hullabaloo when Harin was overseas for medical treatment and you acted for him. You were to act only for his Tourism Ministry but you walked into his Lands Ministry as well and tried to mess around. Harin returned, cutting short his trip, we hear!

As the deputy in charge of Toursim, you also seem to promote some controversial projects. You seem to think that we can recover from our economic problems by becoming a hub for cultivating ‘ganja’ and exporting its medicinal products. It certainly looks as if you are quite fond of ‘ganja’, Diana!

I am also puzzled as to what your future plans are. While you seem to be at loggerheads with almost everyone with links to ‘Sajabey’ your spouse Senaka continues to be the Field Marshal’s aide-de-camp. And lo and behold, the Field Marshal is still the Chairman of the ‘Sajabey’, at least nominally!

It is quite obvious that the Field Marshal is quite ambitious in his own right and feels that he would be a better candidate for the top job than Sajith. So, with friends like you and the Field Marshal gunning for Sajith at every turn, Uncle Ranil might be laughing all the way to the next election!

Despite all this, Diana, there is also that little matter of whether you are a British citizen or not and whether you obtained dual citizenship. One would have thought it was a very simple issue to resolve by looking at the relevant documents. Let us all wait for the verdict of that one, shall we?

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS - The nation has been eagerly awaiting the veridct of your ‘citizenship’ issue for sometime but like the local government elections, that too keeps getting postponed. At the end of it, we hope we are not told, like we were about those elections, “there is no case, even if there is a case, there is no verdict”!