No proposals to overcome country’s economic crisis: MR
Posted on November 16th, 2017
Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera Courtesy The Daily Mirror
While claiming that fraud and corruption of the government had put the country into an economic crisis, former President and MP Mahinda Rajapaksa said today no plan had been proposed in the budget or future development programmes by the President and the Prime Minister to come out of it.
Speaking during the budget debate, he said the debt obtained by the government during the last three years had increased by Rs. 2,773 billion from Rs. 7,391 in 2014 to Rs. 10,164 billion.
He said it was the Sirisena and Wickremesinghe government that had put the country into a debt trap even though they accused his government of doing so.
“We had reduced debt burden to the debt to GDP ratio by 71 per cent when we handed over the government. But now it had increased to 85 per cent. We managed debt servicing effectively by reducing the interest rate. But today the government had increased government expenses on its own and faced an economic crisis,” he said.
He said his government had spent the loans on ending the war, reconciliation process and development programmes in the North and in the other parts of the country.
“We constructed ports, airports, state buildings and developed road network in the country. But the present government has not done any development programme or developed infrastructure,” he said.
Mr. Rajapaksa said the government’s fraud and corruption had gone up where they had to pay Rs. 145 billion as interest due to the bond scam, Rs. 15 billion as compensation due to cancellation of the Srilankan airlines order to purchase airbuses and Rs. 21 billion due to the cancellation of the port city project,” he said.
He said people and businessmen had to pay twofold of the tax they paid in 2014 and added that the government was boasting about increasing tax revenue.
Mr. Rajapaksa also said that the budget had proposed to sell state resources to foreigners by liberalising laws to enable foreigners to buy lands without any obstacle.
He said the government had no power to sell or lease out state resources without peoples’ approval and added that steps would be taken to nationalise state resources sold or lease out without peoples’ approval. ()
November 16th, 2017 at 2:02 pm
Numbers will reveal the truth. We are thankful to you Sir for speaking about it. Give more numbers to ridicule the Yahap looters so it will be a record in the Hansard.
You have to wage the war all alone. Don’t trust GL, Basil and others who mislead you in the past.
We need a dedicated leader who will stand on his own and get rid of this massive wastage in PC system under 13A and make it a simple administration unit as we are a tiny island, half the size of Tamilnadu cutting down the overheads by Rs. millions a month.
You don’t need a big belly ministers to rule this tiny island:
You can get the advice from educated panels as follows: for example:
• Give the health matters to a panel of professors and senior Doctors from the medical college
• Give the Development matters to a panel of professionals from 3 fields of Architecture, Engineering and Quantity Surveying and university professors to develop a 5, 10, 25 and 50 year plans.
• Give the economic matters to a panel of professional economists and professors along with the Central Bank professionals.
• Give the Agriculture to the experts.. not in Glyposayts commission crooks in politicians.
• Give the Foreign policy to experts.. Shenali Waduge and many experts you can find who really loves and feel to protect this Island.
Many more …. Only if you want to make a REAL CHANGE!! Otherwise don’t waste space and time like other politicians.
November 16th, 2017 at 2:35 pm
‘Butcher of Bosnia’ still a hero at home as verdict looms
Dusko Mladic points to the portrait on his wall of his beloved cousin Ratko, the wartime Bosnian Serb army chief, who will next week learn if he is convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
“I guarantee you that he is not guilty of a single murder,” Dusko insists of his “idol”, who faces a verdict from UN judges at The Hague over his actions in Bosnia’s bitter 1992-1995 conflict.
Ratko Mladic became known internationally as the “Butcher of Bosnia”, particularly for his alleged leading role in the 44-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
But in his family village of Bozanovici — and across the rest of the Bosnian Serb entity, Republika Srpska (RS) — the 74-year-old general is still widely regarded as a hero for his part in the civil war.
“If those judges knew him only 60 percent as well as I know him myself,” says Dusko, “he would be immediately acquitted and rewarded”.
On trial since 2012 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Mladic faces judgement on November 22 on 11 charges arising from the war, including genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Some 100,000 people were killed and another 2.2 million displaced in the conflict.
In Bozanovici in eastern Bosnia, his cousin still lives on an unpaved lane bearing the sign “General Mladic Street”, opposite the house where the military chief was born.
Dusko, a retired construction worker and himself a former soldier, recalls the days when Mladic would return on leave from the Yugoslav army, make hay in the fields and create toy guns out of pieces of wood for his younger relative.
Dusko proudly shows AFP a bottle of homemade “rakija”, fruit brandy enjoyed throughout the Balkans, with labels bearing pictures of the general.
“If we stand on the side of justice, truth, God, he should be acquitted,” Dusko insists.
Mayor unmoved
The war ended with a deal that divided Bosnia along ethnic lines into two semi-independent entities: the Serb-run RS and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, dominated by Bosnian Muslims (known as Bosniaks) and Croats.
In the RS, home to around one million Serbs, Mladic will “remain a hero, regardless of everything”, says Momcilo Krajisnik, 72, a former speaker of the RS assembly.
Krajisnik himself was sentenced to 20 years in prison in The Hague and released in 2013, after which he received a triumphal welcome back home in the RS.
In Srebrenica, the site of mass murder over three days in July 1995, the thousands of white stones at the city’s memorial do not change the opinion of the incumbent mayor.
The number of deaths inscribed on the memorial plaque — 8,372 — “is not exact” and Mladic “personally did not commit any crime” says Mladen Grujicic, 35, who succeeded a Bosniak mayor last year.
Mladic is charged with genocide over the massacre, deemed the worst atrocities committed in Europe since the end of World War II.
‘Serb de Gaulle’
In Pale, a town dotted with monuments to former fighters and enlarged by Serbs who left Sarajevo, 15 kilometres further west, the aura of Mladic remains intact.
“Every inhabitant of the RS would happily welcome an acquittal,” says Janko Seslija, president of the veterans’ group of “White Wolves”, an ex-paramilitary commando unit.
The 57-year-old describes Mladic as the “Serb de Gaulle”, referring to the late French general and statesman.
Jelena Sekara, a nurse in her fifties, says it will take a long time to find another such “great patriot” who fought “international criminals, occupiers and fascists”.
Mile Kosoric, 64, a former senior officer who fought under Mladic’s orders, insists he was never ordered to commit crimes and never heard the general doing so.
“I only think that if we had not defended ourselves, we would no longer exist,” says Kosoric, now retired in the Serb nationalist stronghold of Han Pijesak, close to where Mladic set up his wartime headquarters in a thick pine forest.
‘Three truths’
In the office of his gas station in a Pale suburb, ex-convict Krajisnik has hung a civil award presented by the current Bosnian Serb political boss, Milorad Dodik.
“Everywhere the truth is unique, except in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Here, there are three truths” — for Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks, Krajisnik says.
He explains that Serbs believe the court was set up only to try Serbs, who have been “convicted for crimes for which others are not even charged”.
And he warns that the “hatred” born in the 1990s “will be difficult to uproot”.
The recent acquittal in Sarajevo of the Bosniak commander of Srebrenica, Naser Oric, for charges of crimes against Serbs, provoked anger in the RS.
“This is the most shameful verdict in history,” says the Srebrenica mayor Grujicic.
He believes the Bosnian and international justice systems have continued to “designate Serb people as genocidal”.
If Oric had been sentenced, “this image would have changed”.
November 16th, 2017 at 9:38 pm
Mahinda’s detailed speech (published in Lanka C News) had a very good collection of indices. Sri Lanka is down on all since 2014. A clear going backward under Sirisena-Ranil regime. Ease of doing business index is going down since 2013 (89 to 111). Corruption perception index was at 85 in 2014 and now down to over 100.
November 18th, 2017 at 1:29 pm
There is an old saying.Hxxxx A,,, Peha ahanwa.He had his chance….People gave their verdict and the new regime is only catching up.We are doomed!