{"id":65605,"date":"2017-04-27T22:54:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T04:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65605"},"modified":"2017-04-27T15:52:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-27T22:52:33","slug":"defeat-sirisenas-march-to-autocracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/04\/27\/defeat-sirisenas-march-to-autocracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Defeat Sirisena\u2019s march to Autocracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Sirisena-Ranil Junta which grabbed power in Sri Lanka after more than two years of continued conspiracy in Singapore and New Delhi now finds that they are unable to fulfil any of their promises such as abolition of the Executive presidency, getting massive foreign direct investments from western counties, provision of one million jobs, raising the standard of living and making the people rich etc.<\/p>\n

Similar to the fibs such as Rajapaksa family foreign deposits, golden horses, lambogini vehicles and so on they shamelessly and unflinchingly uttered during the election period, immediately after the election they established a State repression unit called FCID and attempted to frighten the opposition and at the same time create a horrendous bad image of the former President Mahinda Rajapakse, his family members and other prominent leaders in the opposition.\u00a0 In this exercise the government even went to the extent of digging lands belonging to various people saying that they are looking for Mahinda\u2019s hidden gold and treasure in then and even went to search the family property of Mr. Welgama in Matugama saying that they were looking for bullet proof vehicles purported to have been hidden in that land.<\/p>\n

All these attempts became futile, no one has so far been found guilty of any crime, misappropriation or fraud while the popularity of Mahinda Rajapaaksa and people\u2019s yearning for him to return to rule this country has reached its zenith. These desires of the people were abundantly displayed at the joint opposition rallies held throughout the country starting with the historic Nugegoda rally, the protest rally held at Hyde Park, and through the mammoth Kandy-Colombo foot walk.<\/p>\n

The government also attempted vainly to suppress the popularity of the prominent opposition personalities such as parliamentarians Wimal Weerawansa and Udaya Gammanpila, former Minister Basil Rajapaksa by remanding them on various allegations for different periods.\u00a0 The genuine and legal opposition in the Parliament was denied time to express their view points on crucial debates and Acts, and the speaker acting like despot even suspended the leader of the joint opposition MP Dinesh Gunawardene for one week from attending for Parliamentary sittings.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the government in addition to its inability to fulfil its promises to the people finds it impossible to cope with people suffering from natural disasters such as floods and draught, Aranayake avalanche, and people suffering from disasters caused by negligence, abandonment, and sloppiness of the government such as Saalawa blast, and Meethotamulla garbage mountain collapse.<\/p>\n

People\u2019s antipathy to the government is growing steadily and they voluntarily resort to various types of demonstrations to vent their anger towards the government including staging road blocks, disrupting transport, \u00a0heckle and boo government politicians and ignore not only government directives but even court orders at some times. On top of this, \u00a0demonstrations are being held almost daily over grievances and injustices being faced by University students, demonstrations against the SAITEM issue, and over desperate attempts being made by the government to sell State institutions, lease out viable projects, traditional and valuable lands, ports and harbours to foreigners, and privatise state institutions under the guise of revitalizing and management reinvigorating.<\/p>\n

Most of these demonstrations almost daily are being held in Colombo as well as in the main outstation towns.\u00a0 A new dimension to these demonstrations were displayed by the University students in Colombo on the night of April 26th<\/sup> by holding a demonstration in the night carrying fire sticks and lamps in addition to their banners.<\/p>\n

The government having succeeded in suppressing a demonstration and a protest in Hambantota by using the Navy Commander himself to inhumanly and brutally attack the protesters and media personnel unsuccessfully attempted to quell demonstrations held in Colombo by deploying use water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets.<\/p>\n

While the ground situation remains in this status World Bank estimates indicate that the 2017 economic growth under this government will only be 4.7% which will be a lowest economic growth of a country in the South Asian region. \u00a0Only Maldives and Afghanistan with 4.5% and 2.4% respectively will be lower than Sri Lanka..\u00a0 It is estimated that India\u2019s economic growth will be 7.2%.<\/p>\n

In addition to this, indices related to various aspects of the economy at the end of December 2015 indicate a significant downfall when compared to the Mahinda Rajapaksa government figures relating to end of 2014.\u00a0 Details of these figures are as follows:<\/p>\n

GDP growth fell from 4.9 to 4.8; remittances from US $ million 7,018 to 6,980; FDI inflows US $ million 1,635 to 1,161; All Share Price Index from 7299 to 6894; unemployment rose from 4.3 to 4.6 per cent; exchange rate from 131.05 to 144.06; fiscal deficit from 5.7 to 7.4 and total public debt from US $ million 7,391 to 8,503. This is the result of mismanagement by this government within one year.<\/p>\n

The 2014 economy was applauded by multi-lateral institutions and rating agencies as that year\u2019s publications by the IMF, S&P, Moody, ADB, Fitch, Millennium Development Goal \u2013 UNDP, Capital Finance International of UK and Annual Travel Study of MasterCard clearly stated that in 2004, when Mahinda Rajapaksa assumed Presidency the economy was very bad and in 2014, the economy was promising. These achievements were made by Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa while fighting a 30 year old war against the tiger terrorists who were notorious as the world\u2019s ruthless terrorist outfit, and many of the NGO vultures in the country and the UNP branded it as an unwinnable war.<\/p>\n

Economic experts and analysts point out that the country is facing this adverse economic situation due to the following:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Increase government expenditure caused by impossible election promises;<\/li>\n
  • bad fiscal policies trying to generate a quick revenue,<\/li>\n
  • reckless defending of the rupee,<\/li>\n
  • short-term borrowing in foreign currency,<\/li>\n
  • suspending major infrastructure projects and thereby killing the growth momentum,<\/li>\n
  • losing credibility amongst foreign investors,<\/li>\n
  • Central Band TreasuryBond scams<\/li>\n
  • Dampening of business sentiments by FCID<\/li>\n
  • inept 2016 Budget,<\/li>\n
  • growing political uncertainty and<\/li>\n
  • global economic slowdown.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Under these dwindling economic situations and the government\u2019s committed policy of selling everything that can be sold mass protests against the government are bound to increase and the government too envisages increased protests and demonstrations in the near future.\u00a0 The Eunuch Sirisena is now well immersed in the greediness of power and would not care for the well being of the country but somehow want to protect his position by resorting to dictatorial means and suppress such demonstrations even by shedding blood and incarcerating opposition politicians including Mahinda Rajapaksa, trade union and student leaders.<\/p>\n

    It is for this vicious intent that he has decided to form a Special Unit called the Special Unit for protecting essential services, and head this Unit by wild cat (Kalavedda) Sarath Fonseka with wide assistance from the Security Forces.\u00a0 This Unit in fact will be a Repressive Armed contingent.<\/p>\n

    The political chameleon Rajitha Senaratne who aided and abetted to topple Mahinda Rajapaksa government within has endorsed the formation of this Unit and told the media that previous leaders such as Dudley Senanayake, Madam Sirimavo Bandaranaike, J.R.Jayawardene and R.Premadasa also used armed forces at times of need and the government cannot allow outside powers to challenge its authority.\u00a0 It is surprising to find the bone chewing lap dogs in the government who conveniently call themselves as SLFPers keeping silent about this prelude to dictatorship. All peace loving patriotic masses devoid of party, colour, religiosity and ethnicity should join together to defeat this dictatorship craze.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By: A.A.M.NIZAM – MATARA Sirisena-Ranil Junta which grabbed power in Sri Lanka after more than two years of continued conspiracy in Singapore and New Delhi now finds that they are unable to fulfil any of their promises such as abolition of the Executive presidency, getting massive foreign direct investments from western counties, provision of one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aamnizam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}