5th Column

My dear ‘pohottuwa’ supporters,

I thought of writing to you this week as you must have returned to your hometowns after attending your ‘convention’ in Colombo on Friday. To look on the bright side, it wasn’t a total disaster. You could at least fill up the Sugathadasa Stadium, even if you had to hire busloads of people to do it.

Seeing you, the ‘pohottuwa’ faithful, flock to that stadium on Friday, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. That must be encouraging after seeing people tie bundles of grass around the flagpoles with the ‘pohottuwa’ flag around the country. I hope you understand what they were trying to say!

Your guest list had two important omissions. Uncle Ranil was not there. I don’t know whether he was invited or not. If he wasn’t that would be very ungrateful. He has kept the ‘pohottuwa’ blooming until now. He has also kept a few people roaming free when they should have been behind bars.

Even more conspicuous by his absence was Gota maama. He gave you the biggest mandates, both at the presidential election and the general election. It was he who also got you into the mess you find yourself in now, but surely, he can’t be forgotten that easily, especially when he is part of the family?

You didn’t forget to invite your founder Basil maama. He created the ‘pohottuwa’ after Aiyo Sirisena hijacked the Blue party and wouldn’t give it back to the ‘R’ clan. Your family thought the Blue party should be with the ‘R’ clan for the next 50 years because the ‘B’ clan had it for the first 50 years.

You can trust your secretary Sagara to provide some laughs. He said we have only two national heroes. The first was Anagarika Dharmapala and the second is Mahinda maama. I can understand him not wanting to acknowledge the likes of DS, but he wants to forget people like SWRD and Sirima too!

He then said that in our country, 3 out of 100 people are good for nothing, do no work, live off others and accuse those who work of being thieves. I suspect he was targeting the ‘rathu sahodaraya’s as he kept referring to ‘3 per cent’ but social media is now full of pictures of Namal, Yoshitha and Rohitha!

Hearing Basil maama speak after that was like listening to a fairytale. He told us that whatever elections are held, your party will win them. Yet, he was also worried that he asked all of you to return home safely. Maybe the lessons learnt on May 9 at the Beira Lake are still fresh in his mind.

You must have been relieved to see Mahinda maama speak for some length of time thereafter. What that tells us is that he is still the only person you have to convey your message, and that Namal baby is not ready to take over the ‘R’ family heirloom just yet – because that is what the ‘pohottuwa’ really is.

It is true the Blue party was also like a family heirloom, being passed on from husband to wife, and then from mother to daughter. Even the Green party is guilty of its leadership being passed on, at first from father DS to son Dudley, and then to nephew Sir John, and then from Uncle JR to nephew Ranil.

Yet, what you must also realise is that times have changed. People are a little bit wiser now, so just being the son of someone can get you only so far, you need to show some flair too. That is why Anura B never made it to the top and also why Sajith is struggling to make his mark.

What we have seen of Namal baby doesn’t convince us that he has anything more than his surname as a qualification to lead the ‘pohottuwa’, even if it doesn’t wither away at the next election. In fact, his surname, once the most marketable political asset in the country, is his biggest liability now.

Recently, he told us that the verdict in that fundamental rights case which found his father and his uncles guilty of economic mismanagement was not quite right because it was a case heard only on written submissions. No wonder then that some question his achievements at Law College!

More recently, Namal baby told us he was opposed to raising the VAT rates, but when it came to voting time in Parliament he was in hiding. So, it is not surprising that no party position was bestowed on the young man because he has miles to go, and we don’t know whether he will even get there.

If you waited for an announcement about your candidate at the next big election, you must have been disappointed. There is a reason for that: He wasn’t there. If you still don’t know who it is, he said recently he had ‘crossed the bridge’ – though I don’t know whether he carried the ‘R’ clan with him!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: These fundamental rights cases are a nuisance, as Namal baby says. This week your favourite cop was found guilty of disgusting activities by our highest court. You better be careful, ‘pohottuwa’ supporters, because if he goes, you will lose the Guardian Angel who protected you on May 9!