John’s ready to hang his boots
Veteran UNP MP and former Minister John Anthony Emmanuel Amaratunga announced this week that he intends to throw in his towel and quit politics.
After Sajith Premadasa’s presidential defeat, gone limp seems to be Amaratunga’s once stiff resolve to never go down without a fight but to keep his spirit raised even beyond the climactic hour. But age seems to have taken its toll and big John seems to have finally come to terms with life and realised that ‘the younger rises when the old doth fall’.
On Thursday, he spoke to the media on why it is necessary for him to call it a day and make way for a younger person who can perform better than him.
He said, “I have been in
Parliament for 41 years and I feel that the time is ripe for me to retire from politics. Contesting for an election is no easy task because now you have to contest for the whole district, I have done it about four or five times and I am now fagged out. Firstly, enormous sums of money is needed to contest an election today and it is quite tiring
an exercise. So if there is any younger person ready to step into my shoes, I’m quite ready to let him. This is not something that we should cling to for life. There comes a time when we must let go.”
“Even Ranil Wickremesinghe had said he does not intend to be the UNP Leader for long.”
But is it a question of age and stamina to carry on alone that has made John think of hanging his boots and saying it’s time for young blood to take his virile place or is it the shock defeat that has given his ego a battering too severe to withstand. For there is no big generation gap between this 79-year-old former Minister and the newly elected 70-year-old President or the newly appointed 74-year-old Prime Minister and the 77-year-old State Minister of Defence, now is there?
Power is not only a great aphrodisiac but also seems to be the elixir of youth.