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[October 13, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian]
THE PRESIDENT Rajapakse has started a media drama for the purpose of hiding the fact that the cost of essential foods are sky rocketing. It is laughable heard that how the government and its sycophants are making excuses for the increasing prices.
Recently in the media drama one of the government allies, the Jathika Hela Urumaya, raised the point that, "We must not surprised about a loaf of bread selling at 50 rupee when the same bread selling in the United State of America by 250- 300 Rs." The answer to this he said was to eat more rice. The point he is missing is the fact that if people want to eat bread they have every right to do so at reasonable prices. It was Marie Antoinette just prior to the French revolution, when told that the people had no bread told her courtiers, "Let them eat cake". The people of France were not impressed with this flippancy and within a few short weeks she and her husband were executed. Could this possibly happen in Sri Lanka?
President Rajapakse has repeated what former US President Abraham Lincoln says, "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time," while referring to the incident which occurred in the Bibila hospital, Monaragala district, recently. But this ideology which he quotes so eloquently must understand by himself also: that he cannot fool all the people all the time in the name of a so called "humanitarian Operation" which crushed the Tigers 16 months ago.
In the last few months more than 300,000 jobs were lost in various sectors, most of them are belonging to apparel sector. Now the government is eliminating bakery jobs by introducing “flour terrorism” which will cost more than another 100,000 jobs.
But there is no credible alternative for society to solve this crisis. This is, and will be, the beginning of a food crisis and mass oppression in the country.
These experiments does not work in modern society. And we should not forget what former the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro said recently when he pointed out in a recent interview that Cuba's system of governance does not work.
If there is no space for the people to enjoy their basic rights and freedoms things can only get worse. Now the law has become the plaything of the President and the people are the pawns. Once Michael Kazin pointed out, "There is a difference between two lost freedoms: those people know they have given up, and those they don't know they've given up." Now the President and his team have secured the second type.
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