5th Column

My dear Mahinda maama,

It has been some time now since I wrote to you last, but you and your family members are back in the limelight, even though it may not be for reasons you would appreciate. Your security is being slashed, you are being threatened with eviction, and your sons have been in and out of remand and the courts.

First, you (and all your ex-President colleagues, Satellite, Aiyo Sirisena, Gota maama and Uncle Ranil, gosh, there are so many of you now!), were told that your security would be slashed. The government of the rathu sahodarayas have done that, though some raised concerns about your safety.

You have gone to courts challenging that, Mahinda maama, but I am a bit baffled by your lawyers’ arguments. On the one hand, they say you ended the war, eliminating the Tiger terrorists. On the other hand, they say you are still under threat from them. If they were eliminated, how can they be a threat?

Next, the rathu sahodarayas want you to leave your official residence. The government claims this house sits on an acre of prime land in Colombo 7 and will cost you more than four and a half million rupees, if you were to rent it. Its repairs alone cost over 450 million rupees in one year, they say.

However, you haven’t budged an inch. ‘Send me a letter and I will go’, is your response and the government is asking why you need a letter to leave. Anyway, the government is yet to send you that letter. Some suspect this is because such a letter cannot be sent unless the Constitution is amended.

Do you want to play the victim, so you can say the leader who won the war is being chased out of his house? If you do, your critics will remind you of what you did to the Field Marshal. Remember also, Mahinda maama, the rathu sahodarayas can change the Constitution if they want to and remove you.

Do you really think people who are burdened with soaring prices and rising taxes are happy to fork out millions for you to reside in luxury, just because you won the war for them? Isn’t it better to leave when they ask why you are leaving rather than waiting until they ask why you aren’t leaving?

As if all this fuss about security and houses was not enough, now you have to worry about Yo baby too. He was arrested on charges of money laundering and later released on bail. We are told this is about how he was able to find money to buy a house worth many millions of rupees in Ratmalana.

The official explanation is that the money came from his grandmother in what is now famous as Daisy aachchi’s bag of gems which the dear old lady found dropped off at her house. What Yo baby wants us to believe, and what the courts seemingly believed a few years ago – is that this is a true story.

We have to either believe that, or believe Yo baby saved millions from his measly salary in the Navy to buy that house. If he managed that, he is such a financial genius that they should drop all charges against him and appoint him instead of Nandalal at the big bank or the other Mahinda at the Treasury.

Yo baby showed he won’t throw in the towel easily, flashing a ‘V’ sign when he was being detained. To add to that, the rathu sahodarayas again showed their inexperience when a deputy minister said he was aware of the arrest the night before. Not quite the promised ‘independent’ Police, or so it seems!

If Yo baby was stoic during his ordeal, the opposite was true of Namal baby. I am so disappointed about him, Mahinda maama. Only a few weeks ago, he was roaring like a lion, brazenly saying ‘catch us if you can’ and challenging the rathu sahodarayas to bring those ‘stolen dollars’ from Uganda.

Namal baby wasn’t even detained, only an indictment was filed against him about the ‘Krrish’ deal and he is whingeing like a pussy cat, asking whether these are the real problems faced by the people. The rathu sahodarayas want to cover up their lapses by engaging in a witch hunt against him, he says.

What Namal baby hasn’t either realised – or has conveniently forgotten – is that the rathu sahodarayas received a strong mandate to ‘catch the thieves’ or, as they say, ‘horu allanna’. Whether they succeed or not is anybody’s guess seeing how clumsy they are, but we can’t grumble when they are trying.

Being the lawyer that he is, Namal baby should know that being indicted will be a blessing in disguise for him if he is innocent. He can then clear his name and lay all those nasty rumours to rest. Instead, he is complaining. You should be thankful he took to dabbling in politics and not to practising law!

After all this, you say, “Remember, I am Mahinda Rajapaksa”. We haven’t forgotten your role in the war, but we remember what happened afterwards. We don’t grudge you a house or security Mahinda maama, but you are in this plight now also because of that: because you are Mahinda Rajapaksa!

Yours truly,

Punchi Putha

PS: Your former Deputy Speaker says you should be preserved for posterity. You can join Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Ze Dong and Kim Il Sung in having a Mausoleum, but I can imagine how this can be used at future elections. Ah, for sheer grandiosity, only one Rajapaksa can beat another Rajapaksa!