The Next Revolution Must Come
Shyamon Jayasinghe
What’s wrong? Everybody with some concern for the country asks this question. Strangely, the Joint Opposition (JO), which is in the habit of crying “foul” for every move taken by the government is dead silent.
Probably this silence lets the cat out of the bag. The demand for super luxury cars would have been triggered by the JO’s former buddies who are now shamelessly in government enjoying cabinet portfolios. These guys are adept at playing hide and seek with Maitri and running into nooks and corners like rats. Recently, we had one of them demanding that Gota should be made SLFP Vice President or some such thing! This MP is disengaged from any notion of social justice-a perfect self server.
Maybe the strange luxury car deal was part of a bribe to get the backing of these corrupt-prone former official lackeys of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Mahinda built a Parliamentary support block by virtually franchising corruption among MPs. Like vultures, this cabal would get into seats of power (even as a ‘Supervising MP,” ) and look around for their prey. The prey is money – convertible – extracted from the impoverished nation of Sri Lankans who are direct and indirect taxpayers. Every institution was plundered and the plunder skilfully hidden away. Even monks in Parliament were bribed with luxury cars.
In Sri Lanka, a posh car is the symbol that one has “arrived.” Actually luxury high-powered cars are an anomaly in a country like Sri Lanka where road conditions cannot accomodate them. Where can one drive at 280 Km/hour?
On the other hand, any outside observer of the Indian Parliament would see top Ministers going about in the Indian-made Ambassador or Fiat. The same observer in Sri Lanka will see our ordinary MPs,with their necks and waists fattened, going about in luxury cars. During the former regime these fellows would get the meek and humble cops to forcefully move out crowds of poor pedestrians away to have the paths for these MPs to cleared. When VIP Ministers like Gota came pedestrians had to face the nearest wall and show their backs.
