5th Column

My dear Anura sahodaraya and the ‘maalimawa’ team,

I am writing to congratulate you on what has been a massive victory at Thursday’s election. It is being described as ‘historic’, ‘unprecedented’ and being a ‘landslide’ win. I suspect even you didn’t expect such a strong mandate coming your way after Anura sahodaraya’s hard fought win in September.

Tilvin sahodaraya, the man who was with you till you did win, said as much. He said you expected a comfortable working majority in Parliament but not a two-thirds majority. At the final count, you won nine seats more than a two-thirds majority. I hope you realise the magnitude of what you have done.

Anura sahodaraya, you called it a ‘shramadana’ or a clean-up of Parliament. What a clean-up it was. Ironically, it came 35 years and a day after the man who began it all, Rohana sahodaraya, met with his demise. That death was under the watch of the father of your main rival at this election too!

Everyone is poring over record books after your victory. They say that you have won the highest percentage of votes ever at a general election in the country, the most number of electorates, the most number of districts and the highest number of seats by a single party. The list is seemingly endless.

This was less than two months after some mocked Anura sahodaraya’s win, saying he was the first President who had a majority of people voting against him. He was. He has silenced his critics now, becoming the first President backed by a team in Parliament which represents the entire country.

That hasn’t happened before. The opposite happened. Politicians ignored a part of the country to get votes from the rest. One defeated President showed a map, saying his rival won with votes from ‘Eelam’ areas. Another victorious President said he won only with Sinhala Buddhist votes.

As I see it, Anura sahodaraya and the ‘maalimaawa’ team, your greatest achievement is not in the records that you have created. It is the fact that you, being a mainstream national party and not a party based on communal lines, have been able to win the confidence of the people in the North and East. 

No one has done that. Sirima couldn’t do so when she won a two-thirds majority in ‘70. Neither did JR despite his five-sixths majority in ‘77. Mahinda maama and Gota maama came close to a two-thirds majority under this system, but riling rather than rallying the North and East was their strategy.

Voters in the North and East have placed their trust in you, ignoring their own politicians who also played the race card to get votes. Maybe because your symbol was the ‘maalimawa’ (or the compass), it is only natural that you turned towards the North. Now, the North has turned towards you!

That is an opportunity that no party with its origins in the South has been given. It is now up to you to repay that trust, to ensure that we do not think as different communities but as one nation. That is your greatest challenge, apart from minimising corruption, Anura sahodaraya and the ‘maalimaawa’ team.

Some say there is a sense of déjà vu about all this because Gota maama came in to office with fresh hope and a strong mandate. I disagree. Their ideal state was one where they, their families and those close to them thrived at the expense of others. I do hope you will be very different to them.

Uncle Ranil teased you claiming you are not experienced enough to govern. He laughed at you, saying the ‘bus’ will topple if you are in charge. You have well over a 100 in your team who will be in Parliament for the very first time. If you prove Uncle Ranil wrong, you can have the last laugh.

You have spent a lot of blood, sweat and tears – and lives – to get where you are today. The younger among the 159 who were elected on Thursday may not even have been around when ’71 and ’89 happened. I hope they realise the importance of the task they have been entrusted.

You have made many promises in your manifesto. You not only promised to clean up Parliament and minimise corruption, you also promised to punish those responsible for misdeeds in the past such as those who masterminded the Easter Sunday attacks. You said you will get the economy back on track.

You also promised to enact a new Constitution and abolish the Executive Presidency, a pledge made by many of Anura sahodaraya’s predecessors. Now, with a two-thirds majority, your mandate is such that there is no excuse if you don’t fulfill those promises. That is how onerous the task before you is.

You have been given great powers, Anura sahodaraya and the ‘maalimawa’ team. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. You also have to bear the weight of huge expectations. We sincerely hope you can manage all this and, make our land a better place for all of us in five years.

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Anura sahodaraya, you won in a manner that made the opposition cry. You must keep recalling your own words, that you don’t want to be remembered in a way that makes people want lightning to strike you. Now that we have the government we deserve, will we ever get the opposition we deserve?