‘Sacrifices’

Thursday 26th August, 2021

Some MPs held a press conference yesterday to announce their decision to donate their salaries for the country’s fight against Covid-19. Their concern for the hapless public should be appreciated, but the amounts they are giving back as donations pale into insignificance compared to what they have got from the public, both legally and illegally. So, why should they make a big show of their donations?

Do the MPs and ministers give press conferences when they sell their duty-free vehicle permits and earn billions of rupees at the expense of the state coffers? Do they tell the public how much they draw as vehicle loans at ridiculously low interest rates? Will they reveal how many MPs have paid off their vehicle loans? How many bad loans have been written off, and who are the MPs responsible for causing such losses to the state?

Most of the MPs who have decided to forgo their salaries for a month or so are not qualified to be even labourers in the state sector. If they had opted to get employed instead of taking to politics, they would have been among the low-income earners, today, standing in queues to receive Rs. 2,000 each as pandemic relief. They would not have been able to live in clover but for the public who elect and maintain them. Most of them, in fact, should be behind bars for the theft of public funds, bribery and corruption. They are lucky that Sri Lankans suffer fools and crooks gladly and even make them their representatives. So, instead of making a song and dance about their ‘sacrifices’, these politicians must thank the public and apologise to them for having ruined the economy and reduced the country to a mendicant state.

The SLFP has set up a separate Covid-19 fund instead of donating its MPs’ salaries to the government’s pandemic control programme, we are told. What made it do so? Maybe it cannot trust the government with funds! But it is also responsible for the plunder of public wealth, bribery, corruption and the criminal waste of people’s money. When the current SLFP leader, Maithripala Sirisena, refused to move into the President’s House and started building a separate presidential palace immediately after his inauguration as the President, in 2015, we argued, in this space, that he was already working on his retirement package. We pointed out that he knew he would be able to continue to live in that palace after completing his first term. He spent a colossal amount of public funds on the project to amalgamate three houses into one, and today he is occupying the palatial residence. The money spent on his palace could have been utilised to build schools and hospitals. The reason given for his refusal to occupy the President’s House was that he wanted to have his expenditure curtailed, but Citizen Silva ended up coughing up more money for the construction of another presidential palace.

During the yahapalana government, two limousines, costing Rs. 300 million each, were ordered for the then Prime Minister. Supplementary estimates to the tune of billions of rupees were passed for importing luxury vehicles for ministers, and others in the aftermath of disasters such as the Meethotamulla garbage dump collapse and the Salawa armoury blast.

The incumbent administration sought to import many SUVs, etc., for ministers and MPs while the pandemic was raging and the country’s foreign reserves were dwindling and debts mounting. Thankfully, widespread protests made the government to shelve its plan.

Some government MPs have reportedly said they find it difficult to donate their salaries because loan installments are deducted therefrom. Are they trying to dupe us into believing that they are so honest that they are without other sources of income? Is it that they have not benefited from the billion-rupee mega rackets the incumbent government has carried out? If they cannot forgo their salaries in spite of being well-heeled and maintained by the public, how come the government expects the ordinary people to make more sacrifices?