This young Green party Diyawanna member from the gem-rich district is the chief dayakaya of a prominent Buddhist temple in his home turf. He recently summoned the Dayaka Sabha to discuss arrangements to be made about holding the temple’s annual perahera. 

During the discussion, participants pointed out to their young Diyawanna member that the stretch of the road where the perahera was due to parade was badly broken up and the repairs had to be carried out before the perahera was to be taken out.  “O! That’s a very small matter. You all can rest assured that will be attended to on time,” he told the Dayaka Sabha members.

The young member lost no time in phoning up a high-up of the Highway Authority to inform him of the urgency in effecting repairs to the road in his village in view of the upcoming perahera event. “This job will not cost even half a million,” he told the high-up.  The reply he got from the high-up shocked the young Diyawanna member. 

“Sorry, Manthrituma, our funds have run out to the last cent! We are not able to undertake this job soon!”

The young member was not prepared to take ‘no’ for an answer. He immediately contacted Number One and Number Two, his party leader and reported to them about the negative reply received from the Highway Authority high-up.

Both Number One and Number Two had immediately pulled up the Highway Authority bigwig for turning down the Diyawanna member’s request by presenting a wrong picture.

And that worked wonders: within hours men and machinery made their appearance in the village and repair work began in earnest. They did take only three days to develop the entire stretch of the road, they say.