By Dasun Edirisinghe

The Kandy-Colombo Pada Yathra was only a warm-up act and the Joint Opposition (JO) would achieve its goal with the help of the next mass protest, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in Colombo last evening.

Addressing a massive crowd at the Lipton Circus at the conclusion of the five-day Pada Yathra, which had wended its way along the Kandy road, Rajapaksa said the JO and it allies were ready to give the masses anything they asked for.

The JO organisers said they had been compelled to hold their final meeting at the Lipton Circus as the government had denied them a place in the city for that purpose.

They said the government had ‘shamelessly’ prevented them from using all public grounds from Kandy to Colombo while extolling the virtues of good governance.

Rajapaksa said he and his colleagues such as UPFA MPs Vasudeva Nanayakkara and Dinesh Gunawardena would recall that they had once held a similar Pada Yathra from Colombo to Kataragama against the Premadasa government. Unlike the present-day rulers the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa had demonstrated he had the strength of character by refraining from making any effort to thwart the protest march, Rajapaksa said. “He did not kneel before judges in a bid to stop our march.”

The incumbent government had remained in power for one year and eight months and without popular support, it was being propped by the CID, FCID and the Bribery Commission, former President Rajapaksa told a cheering crowd. “If they think we will give up our struggle for fear of being incarcerated, they are mistaken. Suppression will only steel our resolve to step up our fight as we have amply demonstrated in the past.” The fate that befell previous dictators awaited the ‘duo’ in power, he said.

Rajapaksa said Ranil and Rathu Ali Petiya (‘Red Elephant Calf’) were playing a ball game. They were bowling full tosses so that both of them could score heavily, he said. The Rathu Ali Peitya had lost his ideological bearings and the onus was on his followers to guide him on the correct path, the former President said smilingly.

The government had resorted to draconian methods to increase its income, Rajapaksa said, claiming that VAT was charged even on medication for a common cold. The government was planning to ink the Economic and Technological Agreement (ETCA) to provide employment opportunities for foreigners at the expense of the local youth, Rajapaksa said. The farmers had been deprived of the much-needed fertiliser subsidy and they were compelled to dispose of their paddy for a song. Rajapaksa asked the crowd whether they knew who had benefited from the woes of paddy farmers. The crowd shouted, ‘Araliya, Araliya … [brand name of rice produced by a miller in Polonnaruwa].’ A smiling President said only he had been accused of nepotism.

Courtesy:The Island