My dear Anura sahodaraya, I am writing to you after hearing that a recent survey among citizens in Paradise has found that your popularity is sky high and that around three fourths of people still have confidence in you. After being in office for two months shy of two years, that must surely make you [...]
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I am writing to you after hearing that a recent survey among citizens in Paradise has found that your popularity is sky high and that around three fourths of people still have confidence in you. After being in office for two months shy of two years, that must surely make you proud and very happy.
On the contrary, less than a third of people are happy with the way Sajith is doing his job, leading the opposition. Those who did the survey didn’t ask about Namal baby. He must be thanking his lucky stars for that. Those who undertook the survey do not have any links to the ‘maalimaawa’ as well.
Anura sahodaraya , if you thought I was writing to congratulate you about all this, you are wrong. Instead, I am writing to caution you not to get carried away by these surveys into thinking that your re-election in three years’ time would be a mere formality. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Why I am worried is that some of your ‘maalimaawa’ chaps seem to believe that they are here to stay. The other day, your deputy in charge of defence was saying that there won’t be a leader to challenge you for the next twenty-five years and that even if there were, they would have to come from heaven.
To begin with, I can’t understand why we are even discussing a presidential race that is supposed to happen in 2029. Didn’t you so solemnly pledge, Anura sahodaraya , that you would change JR’s Constitution and abolish your all powerful office, when you asked for our vote over two years ago?
Satellite did the same when she ran for the top job. In fact, one of your candidates, Nihal sahodaraya withdrew from the race because of that. Very few people recall this now, but even Mahinda maama signed a ‘deal’ with your party to abolish the top job when he ran for that office for the first time.
Then, Aiyo Sirisena based his entire campaign on the promise of abolishing the top job and won. He did curtail some of its powers and reduce the duration of his term from six years to five but never did what he promised. Neither did his predecessors who, in fact, wanted to stay in office for longer.
Remember, Satellite asked the highest court of the land whether she could stay in office for one more year but Sarath said ‘no’. Mahinda maama went one step further and amended the Constitution so he could contest for a third time, which he did and rather unexpectedly lost to Aiyo Sirisena.
With such history behind us, Anura sahodaraya , people elected you- not with a resounding mandate but with less than fifty per cent of the vote, remember — because they thought you and your party would be different to the Greens, Blues and Maroons and would honour the promises you made.
If you and the ‘maalimaawa’ were serious about abolishing the top job, surely, we should have heard something about it by now. We haven’t. We hear rumours about the retirement age of judges being raised but not a word has been said about abolishing your job by the time the next election is due.
Anura sahodaraya , can you honestly go before the people again and ask for five more years in the job, just so you can abolish it? Do you want to be mentioned in the same sentence as Satellite, Mahinda maama and Aiyo Sirisena as having promised to abolish the top job but not doing it?
Please don’t get me wrong. The ‘ maalimaawa ’ chaps, under your leadership, have made a difference. We don’t hear of mass scale corruption now. Law enforcement authorities, to a large extent, have been given a free hand to act without political interference. Criminals and the corrupt are being sent to jail.
We appreciate all this but we must also hold you accountable to your promises. There are no excuses for not keeping them either because you are backed by a two-thirds majority in Parliament. There are better things to do with that than overcoming no confidence motions, like Harshana did this week.
You could begin by holding provincial council polls, instead of offering poor excuses that the law needs to be changed to conduct them. Instead, Tilvin sahodaraya goes to Jaffna and, unwittingly copies Uncle Ranil, saying, ‘because of Cyclone Ditwah, there is no money, so there are no elections’!
This is why, Anura sahodaraya , I thought I must write to you, even when surveys say that over three fourths of citizens in Paradise still have confidence in you. Yes, they probably do, but remember, you have three more years to keep the key promises you made. If you don’t, it might be a different story.
PS – It is true that the opposition is fragmented and there are many presidential hopefuls biding their time, waiting for 2029. You can kill two birds with one stone if you abolish the top job by then because they will not have a race to run. How about that for an incentive, Anura sahodaraya ?
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