FSP says ‘Ranil-Rajapaksa junta’ depriving people of their economic and political rights

The Frontline Socialist Party says the ‘Ranil-Rajapaksa junta’ does not give economic rights to people nor their political rights including elections and they would neither be allowed to struggle for those rights.

Addressing an FSP election rally at Matugama, its Education Secretary Pubudu Jagoda said that people were left with no alternative but to unite with progressive forces to send the government home.

He said that his party condemned Sunday’s police attack on people staging a protest near the Lipton Circus demanding their right to vote and they condole with the family members and friends of Nimal Amarasiri, who succumbed to the injuries received during the protest.

Jagoda said that the government now had resorted to the means of violence against public voice uprisings. “A group of protesters were assaulted on Feb 4 at Maradana. The government is acting in an unjust and illegal ways to delay the people’s right to vote. When people come to the roads demanding their rights, the government uses armed policemen to assault them. These people are deprived of their democratic right while they were undergoing tremendous hardships because of the economic crisis. The UN says that 5.9 million people of this country are facing starvation. This government has taken away the economic rights of the people. It has taken their political rights by deferring the local council polls indefinitely. When people come out against this oppression and demand justice, the government uses the police to beat them.

“This brings us to the mind of an adage during the cold war. A dog in the eastern side of the Berlin wall tells another it has food but no right to bark while the other in the western side responds that it can bark as much as it likes but there is no food. A local dog would retort that it has neither food nor right to bark,” Jayagoda said.