Sajith accuses govt. of hiding behind IMF and not having a strategy to overcome crisis

By Saman Indrajith

The government did not have a social contract with the people, Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa told Parliament on Monday (21).

The government had to tell people what its strategy for overcoming the crisis was and secure the cooperation of all stakeholders, he said.

“We are facing a serious crisis. We are not the only country to face a crisis. Many governments have successfully faced similar crises and they have done this by coming into a social contract with the people. The Ranil Wickremesinghe government has no contract with the people. The only contract the President has is the one with the 134 MPs that voted him into power,” he said.

Premadasa said that MPs have been debating the 2023 budged for days. However, the rationale behind the budget is not revealed to the MPs, the opposition leader said.

“The government has come to a staff level agreement with the IMF and all its policies are based on that. However, the MPs have not seen it. The Parliament is supposed to determine state finances, but this is not true. Everyone knows this. The government is also using the IMF agreement to fleece the people. If anyone criticizes the economic policy of the government, its leaders say that this is what the IMF wants, and that Sri Lanka will be in deep trouble without IMF funding. I don’t know about the IMF, but rich henchmen of the government are benefitting,” he said.

Premadasa added that the budget 2023 has many inconsistencies. It talks about encouraging exports while burdening exporters with taxes.

“The ministers talk about an environmentally friendly budget and about digitization. This is good but where is the money allocated for this? This is not different to the 2022 budget presented by Basil Rajapaksa. The average Sri Lankan is taxed while people involved in corruption are given tax breaks. The sugar scam had cost the state 45 billion rupees. The state is not taxing cigarettes. Officials don’t want to tax tobacco because they are getting money from big tobacco,” he said.

Basil Rajapaksa reduced the taxes on tobacco, Premadasa said. Under a Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) government those who had stolen state funds will be punished and these individuals will have to pay what they owe the state, he said.

“The government is trying to embezzle EPF money again by introducing an insurance scheme for the private sector. 20 percent of the money allocated for welfare will be used for administration work. We need to change this. How do we identify poor people and ensure that the money doesn’t go to cronies? I heard a professor saying that the best way to identify the poor is to look at people’s electricity consumption. This is a good method. We need to do a survey on poverty. We should have done this after COVID. If we had done research and taken steps, we wouldn’t be seeing this level of poverty,” he said.