24 April 2019 11:59 am Views - 499
Sarath always looked on the Green Party as his main political opponent.
At the 1977 General Polls, the Blues and Leftists suffered a debacle which saw the Parliamentary Opposition reduced to some Tamil party members, a handful of Blue party members and the sole Communist party MP Comrade Sarath.
Comrade Sarath, however, made up for the poor presence of the Opposition in terms of numbers by becoming a hard-hitting critic of the powerful Green party Government.
When Comrade Sarath became the main thorn in the side of the Government, a group of Green party backbenchers thought of a ploy to contain Sarath’s fire in Parliament. The leader of this group, a certain ‘Nayake’ from Ududumbara would start heckling Comrade Sarath whenever he would take the floor and the other members of the group would follow suit. Even the Speaker found it difficult to silence the vociferous hecklers. And the situation had turned intolerable for Sarath.
One day, Comrade Sarath rising to his feet started speaking in Sinhala as usual.
He said: “Honorable Speaker, even you found it difficult to control the Green Party backbenchers disturbing me whenever I addressed this august assembly. I am now going to resort to my own way of silencing all the hecklers!” Having said that, Sarath switched on to fluent English. The hecklers who did not know English could not understand what Sarath was speaking about were stunned and were compelled to keep quiet.
So, Sarath continued his speech which was a broadside on the Green Government, for once free from heckling or interruptions!