Vroom mania

Thursday 16th May, 2024

The Parliament of Sri Lanka can hardly have a sitting without its members resorting to slanging matches and even coming to blows. They seldom see eye to eye on anything of national importance. But they readily sink their differences and work as one to further their own interests and safeguard their privileges. The government has reportedly decided to grant the MPs duty-free vehicle permits (DFVPs) while the people are struggling to meet their basic needs.

Never do the self-righteous MPs miss an opportunity to harangue public officials on the need to manage state funds frugally in view of the current economic crisis. A few weeks ago, they tore into the Central Bank employees over a triennial pay hike, which, they said, was unconscionably high. Their rhetoric and diatribe may have resonated with the irate public. Speaking in Parliament the other day, President Ranil Wickremesinghe said in no uncertain terms that the public sector workers must not expect pay increases this year as the government was without sufficient funds. The Local Government elections have been postponed on the grounds that funds cannot be allocated for them. Curiously, never do such pecuniary woes of the government stand in the way of the MPs enhancing their perks and leading the high life.

The MPs consider themselves ‘more equal’ than others and therefore they are likely to find ways and means of circumventing the rules and regulations that prevent the import of vehicles for private use. The superrich are known to have deep pockets when it comes to brand-new super luxury vehicles, which they cannot import at present. They will pay many times the market prices of such vehicles, and the MPs will be able to make a killing if they are allowed to import duty-free vehicles.

A group of civil society activists held a protest opposite the Presidential Secretariat, yesterday, against the government’s decision to issue DFVPs to the MPs. The police disrupted their agitation, and they had to go whence they had come after handing over a petition to a presidential aide. Their voice, we believe, is representative of all Sri Lankans who are struggling to keep the wolf from the door. Most people cannot even afford bus fares, which have been jacked up, but the MPs are given DFVPs and other perks.

A camel, in one of Aesop’s fables, empties its bowels while walking in a stream, and seeing its dung racing past it, it wonders how come what should be behind it is going ahead of it. Sri Lankans must be thinking likewise when they see the politicians they elect zing past them in luxury vehicles.

Sri Lanka, which has resorted to a debt default, must stop pampering the MPs who are leading whiskey lifestyles on the country’s toddy income. Their perks, which cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg, will make their counterparts in the developed world green with envy. The members of the present parliament cannot absolve themselves of responsibility for the current economic crisis, which did not come about overnight; the signs of it had been felt for a long time, and Parliament should have used its powers to ensure that remedial measures were adopted. So, its members are without any moral right to receive DFVPs.

The law that provides for the sale of DFVPs immediately after their issuance must be abolished; previously, it was illegal to transfer DFVPs before five years from the dates of their issuance. The Mahinda Rajapaksa government legalised that unlawful practice. The status quo ante must be restored.

Politicians had better stop testing the people’s patience, which is wearing thin.