by Saman Indrajith

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa described the budget 2017 as a ‘loketa parakase gedarata maragathe (‘Big show to the world, but calamity at home’) budget for it has protected the interests of the international community at the cost of national interests.

Participating in the second reading stage debate on the budget proposals, former President Rajapaksa said: This budget paves the way for increased borrowings, taxes and fines. The proposals contained UNP’s economic policies of selling off public enterprises and depriving the people of their welfare rights and destroying the national economy.

“During our time between 2005-2014 we never privatised any of the enterprises. The present government is weakening the Central Bank and state banks so that there would be no other option other than to privatise them. The Central Bank, harbours and many other public ventures now have been labeled as loss making ventures so that they could be privatised. This will be extended soon to expressways, railways and water reservoirs.

“Recent election results in the UK and the US indicate that people there have rejected globalisation and market economic policies. The people sent home their leaders who effected regime changes in the rest of the world. They rejected the leaders who worked above national interests on international interests.

“It is tragic that the incumbent government embracing the policies rejected by the Western developed nations. The budget is a document of an agenda promoting international interests over the national interests. It is so unfortunate that some SLFP members too have contributed and committed themselves to that agenda.

“The incumbent government has obtained loans too while blaming the previous government of taking loans. The total outstanding of loans were 7,391 billion rupees when we handed over the government. Within one year, the new government increased the figure to 9,062 billion rupees as at June this year. They have obtained more than Rs 2,600 billion for the last two years. Though they got such amount of loans we cannot see any development projects being implemented.

“The budget is nothing but a UNP vision document. Privatising of public institutions, pruning down welfare, weakening public service, discouraging local businessmen, increasing taxes on local consumers, repaying the VAT to foreigners, converting the country to an economic colony of western countries etc are the time-honoured UNP policies. We can see all these features in this budget too. The sad reality is some SLFPers too have sullied their hands by contributing to this budget. A true SLFPer would never vote for this budget. I hope they will vote against this budget in accordance with their conscience,” MP Rajapaksa said.

Courtesy:The Island