5th Column

My dear Uncle Ranil,

I thought I should write to you this week to wish you a happy New Year though you have already wished us, your fellow citizens of Paradise for the New Year. This year will decide whether you will be forced into an ‘early’ retirement or whether we will see five more years of you – or even longer!

We wondered whether your New Year greeting for 2024 will be ‘Happy New Year’ or ‘Happy New VAT’ which came into effect on the 1st. We got your message that it is needed because the IMF told you they wanted it. So, is your campaign theme going to be ‘Read my lips: more and more taxes’?

Now, don’t tell us again about your famous ‘wel paalama’ or suspension bridge. You say you are guiding Mother Lanka through that. Others say that the only people you are guiding are the ‘R’ clan, so that Namal baby can reach the top one day, while the rest of us fall through its gaps and perish.

That brings us to the all-important question, Uncle Ranil. What are all these stories we hear about you not running the race next year? The last time when you got into a position of absolute power and authority was almost 30 years ago when you took over the Greens – and you are still in that job!

Now that you find yourself in the ultimate position of absolute power in Paradise, even if you came upon it almost accidentally, surely you’d want to stay a little bit longer? Then, I am sure you’d also want to go down in history as an ‘elected’ boss rather than someone who got a ‘hand-me-down’ job.

Knowing you and the little games you like to play, I feel all this speculation about you not running the race is a red herring, designed to attract more candidates to the contest, like moths to a bright light, until they are so close that they get burnt. Dilith and Dhammika have fallen into this trap already.

With more people in the fray, the votes will get divided. You may be thinking this will be to your advantage. Pardon me, Uncle Ranil, it seems there are a dozen presidential candidates coming out of every bush right now. but in the end, there are only three contenders really: Sajith, Anura and you.

You cannot do much about those who are attracted to Anura but you plan to steal some ‘pohottuwa’ MPs before Basil can say ‘kaputu kaak, kaak kaak.’ That is Lansa’s job. He has started work already with Anura Yapa nominally leading that camp. If you are not contesting, why go to all that trouble?

Sajith too seems to have taken a leaf out of your book. He is keen to recruit anybody and everybody from the ‘pohottuwa’ camp, be it G L, Nalaka, Dilan, Shan or even Jayasumana. The popularity of the ‘pohottuwa’ being what it is, I am not sure whether these cross-overs are good for either of you.

Even more interesting is the idea that you might hold the general election before your own race. That is what Dearly Beloved did nearly 30 years ago. On that occasion, Satellite won the most number of seats but didn’t get a majority and Gamini wanted to string a coalition of sorts to stay in power.

It was you who didn’t like that idea then. You promptly left Temple Trees where you were residing as DB’s PM. Times have changed, haven’t they? This must be a tempting option for you now because, if you hold a general election first, you will be the boss until October, no matter who wins the election!

That might give you time and space to manipulate matters – just like you did with the local government polls. This strategy might buy you some time but surely you don’t want to burden Paradise with an unstable government at a time when what it needs most is strong leadership and a stable system.

You speak so much about 2048. When that time comes you will want to be remembered as the leader who cast aside personal glory to do what is right for Paradise, and not as someone who overstayed his welcome. Just look at Mahinda maama: History won’t be kind to him despite winning the war!

Uncle Ranil, even if people realise why you raised taxes, they won’t understand why you didn’t hold elections on time, why, when people are sacrificing so much, the corrupt are not behind bars and why people like Keheliya, Diana and the ‘Siddhalepa’ IGP still thrive. Think about all this too, will you?

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Have you heard what Vajira says about you? He says you are better than Biden or Putin, that those running against you are of unsound mind and that the IMF must discourage them. So, you become the laughing stock. If you want to win, lock him up and throw the key until after the election!