JVP and Me

Indi's column

(October, 13, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In this times of bald-faced corruption, kleptocracy and nepotism, one finds oneself in strange alliances. Ranil giggling with CBK, forming a National Congress with Mangala. In this time where Sri Lanka can either choose to descend into African-style leadershit or a checked and balanced democracy, even the JVP is starting to make sense. For the record, if the JVP truly wants to ‘hit out at government incompetence‘ they might consider, um, leaving the government. However, anybody stating the bleeding freaking obvious is welcome. The government is bankrupting the country. They are enlarging the bloated and cancerous state sector, letting more and more Rajapakse spawn into the treasury and printing more money. What this means is that you, I and the fishmonger have less money in our pockets than last month through the scourge of inflation. When Mahinda stays at the Ritz and jet-sets to Beverly Hills with 65 free-loaders, that’s our money. When he prints money to cover the deficit, it makes your money worth less. When he tries to borrow $500 million on an HSBC credit card to avoid transparency, that debt is passed onto our children. As retarded as the JVP’s own economic policy is, this is even too far for them.

To quote the mirror:

“Addressing the 10th annual convention of the Ceylon Teachers’ Services Union, JVP Trade Union Wing Leader K.D. Lal Kantha attributed the skyrocketing Cost of Living to the government’s short sighted economic plans.

“The government injected money into circulation expecting that it could double the productivity by the end of the year, But the production of goods and services did not increase as expected thus causing further inflation,” he said.

“Even if the government comes up with a political budget it will get into further trouble as it will has to increase the salaries of public servants, resolve their salary anomalies, provide subsidies and more importantly reduce the tax burden,” he said commenting that President Mahinda Rajapaksa was good at every exercise except governing the country.

“He is extremely busy attending funerals, weddings and opening ceremonies but he is not solving key- problems affecting the people. The government has failed to ensure the economic growth though it is concentrating on the war front.

If the government continues to fail to achieve economic growth it would result in the failure in all its efforts including the maintenance of the war,” he said.
…

“When the government takes loans from international monetary agencies at low interest rates,

it should explain how the funds are going to be used. But now the government is planning to take a loan from a private bank consortium and higher interest rates because the monies could be spent at its own will. So the President could spend the money to roam around the world with a 100 member team or pay huge salaries to consultants who are so feeble that they cannot even get out of their beds,” he said.

When the JVP starts making economic sense, you know we have well and truly elected an incompetent. Well, not we exactly, as entire provinces of Sri Lanka were disenfranchised this election. This admist Thamilselvans (the smile to the LTTE’s death’s head) admitting that Basil did meet with the LTTE making Mr. 10% a liar. The deeper allegation, which Thamilselvan denies, is that the LTTE and Mahinda conspired to deny people in the North and East the vote as a result of those meetings. But I digress. Mahinda cannot fight this war if he cannot fund this war, and we are too poor a country to support this pack of rajas. If the JVP really thinks this government is incompetent they should withdraw from it and join the opposition. Budget time, inshallah.

(Indipendentsl)