Fleecing the hungry

Friday 9th September, 2022

Sri Lankans are gluttons for punishment. In 2019, as many as 6.9 million of them, hoping for a better future, exercised their franchise to elect the current administration. Three years on, their dream leaders have bankrupted the country, and the people who are food-insecure number 6.3 million, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. One may have been able to console oneself by considering it as comeuppance of sorts if the starving souls had been all SLPP voters, but that is not the case. Even those who did not vote for the incumbent administration have become the victims of the economic crimes it has perpetrated. Children are the worst affected.

There is hardly anything that is not politicised in this country. The current administration has given a political twist to the issue of child malnutrition. Disputing statistics in a UNICEF report, it has claimed that the prevalence of malnutrition among children has decreased since 2016. It would have the public believe that child nutrition has improved on its watch! It seems to have taken the masses for asses! According to the WFP, food inflation has increased to 90% and the cost of a nutritious diet has soared to 156%. Does the government think the people are so stupid as to buy into its claims?

Education Minister Susil Premajayatha declared in Parliament, the other day, that he had denied permission for a UN agency to video schoolchildren as part of a campaign to fight hunger in Sri Lanka. He said he would never allow Sri Lankan children to be demeaned in that manner! The whole world knows that we are a bankrupt nation, and millions of people are starving here. Besides, do the members of the incumbent administration, which has plundered public wealth, mismanaged the economy and bankrupted the country, think they have any moral right to speak of the dignity of children? Let the WFP and the FAO be urged to publish photographs of our horizontally-gifted MPs sporting heavy gold necklaces, bracelets and gem-studded rings, their palatial houses and flashy vehicles so that the world will know that the plunder of national wealth is the root cause of Sri Lankans’ hunger.

Dissident SLPP MP Vasudeva Nanayakkara told Parliament a home truth recently in the form of a rhetorical question. He demanded to know if the children of any sitting MP were malnourished? The answer obviously is in the negative. Most of the MPs hype up their humble beginnings during elections to win public sympathy, but they and their progeny live high on the hog. How come they have amassed so much wealth? The answer to this question will explain why so many children are malnourished and 6.3 mn people are food-insecure.

The colony of leeches (read self-seeking politicians sponging off the public) expanded yesterday with the appointment of 37 State Ministers. Does the government think a huge increase in the number of ministers will help grant relief to the people crying out for help? A ministerial post is licence to steal public funds, and abuse power, in this country.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe may be keen to change the existing political culture, curtail waste, and turn the economy around, but he is succumbing to pressure from the Rajapaksa family; he is helpless because he is flying on borrowed wings, and cannot afford to antagonise the parasitic SLPP, which keeps him on a string. At this rate, there is bound to be a massive increase in the number of Cabinet ministers as well.

What is expected of the government is not picking holes in UN reports that it finds politically embarrassing, or bellowing rhetoric; it has to do what needs to be done to feed hungry mouths and increase the level of child nutrition. If the widespread waste of public funds, and corruption are curtailed, there will be enough money for the provision of food aid to the needy, especially malnourished children. Instead, the government is bent on helping increase the waistlines of its MPs and their kith and kin.

The TNA has asked Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, on Wednesday, to name the MP who had asked for Rs. 1 billion as compensation for his properties damaged by mobs in May. How has he raised funds for the acquisition of such expensive assets? Has he declared them to the taxman? It is unthinkable that the self-proclaimed people’s representatives could be so heartless as to help themselves to public funds while millions of citizens, especially children, are starving.