1 June 2024 12:00 am Views - 366
Even though an election has not been officially announced by the Commissioner of Elections, election fever has hit our political parties. The Secretary of the United National Party (UNP) suggested a possible postponement of elections. Was he drawing a red herring to test the political waters?
The ordinary man on the street though, has not been drawn into this conversation. They are looking for ways and means to keep the wolf from the door. But this does not mean they are disinterested.
On 29 May, nearly all news media carried the pathetic tale of a mother of four living in Padaviya, having had electricity and water supply to her house being disconnected. Four months ago her husband-the sole breadwinner of the family died in a tragic accident. She has been unable to make ends meet since then.
The youngest child is 40 days old! The two elder children study in the fourth and second grades at their school, while the third child is a two-year-old.
These days it costs over rupees one hundred thousand a month to only feed a family of four. This unfortunate family has lost its sole breadwinner and the young mother is unable to cope.
Unfortunately, this story and other similar pathetic stories are frequently played out in different parts of the country-unfortunately without ever reaching the media.
As we revealed in these columns on Wednesday about the tea and rubber estates of our country, the monthly salary of two working parents amounts to around sixty thousand rupees. This is less than half the sum required to feed a family of four.
The tragedy of the family at Padaviya occurred four months ago. The family has been left destitute. As Padaviya is a poor/neglected agricultural area, friends and neighbours can help out with small quantities of food temporarily. However, the high cost of living will not permit them to continue these philanthropic deeds over extended periods. Food is only part of the necessities a family requires.
On 29 May our sister paper the ‘Daily FT’ revealed a leading public company recorded a Rs. 4.8 billion profit before tax, with triple-digit growth of 412% in the fourth quarter of financial year 2024. Do our politicians know of this difference in income disparity? What are they doing to correct this imbalance?
According to the Department of Census and Statistics the highest 10 percent of the population shared 32.9 percent of total income in 2016 while the lowest 10 percent of the population shared 2.9 percent in the same year. In 2019 the number of poor surged by 4 million to 7 million since 2019 to 31 percent of the population in 2023.
For our political elites, these incidents of human despair are but points with which they can berate their political opponents. Do our politicians have an idea as to how we are going to reduce these disparities or are they even worried about how the other half of our people live or die?
While all political parties vehemently demand the holding of polls, we the people too demand our rights should not be tampered with. But we would like to hear in a practical manner how our political parties hope to correct this situation of poverty and inequality.
We do not want to hear fairy tales of bringing back capital that was taken out of the country. Rather, we would like to know what our parliamentarians will do to punish those crooks who robbed this country. After all many of them still remain members of Parliament.
Coming back to the postponing of elections, we would like to remind those who are of this bent, as to what happened to government authorities who indulged in this practice.
Ms. Bandaranaike extended the life of her government and was thrown out at the next polls. JR Jayewardene extended the life of Parliament via a rigged referendum and the country faced a brutal insurgency from 1987 to 1989 where over 6,500 persons were killed-many of them innocent civilians.
Having but recently come out of economic bankruptcy and a nearly 30-year ethnic war we do not even wish to contemplate the possibility of a return to those bad days of old.