Did the JO man take his colleagues for a ride?

How a uniformed bigwig found himself at the centre of a storm when a phone conversation he had with a ‘sir’ at a public function went public is no longer news. By the way, there had been much more to this drama than had met the public eye.

Everyone knows that the JO stalwarts pounced on this issue with glee as they found it ideal grist to their anti-government mill. And they created a big ho ha about it in the Diyawanna council too. 

According to the latest turn of this sensational episode, a particular JO big gun from Matara had incited his colleagues to raise this hue and cry over the affair for personal reasons. The story runs like this: ‘Nilame’ connected to a popular devalaya in the South on whose behalf the mysterious ‘sir’ had spoken to the uniformed bigwig happens to be a close pal of the former strongman and he is planning to contest the next general poll with the latter’s blessings. As the man is already popular because of his ‘nilame’ status and is to get the blessings of the former strongman on top of that, the particular JO big gun from Matara had realized that he would be a poor match for this ‘upstart’ at a future poll. So he decided that the best way to put him out of the scene was to brand him as a Green man. 

The JO stalwarts hailing from the South who were the first to get wise to their colleague’s ploy are said to be telling one another these days that they have to be wary of the ones from their own tribe trying to fish in troubled waters!