Lanka Citizen

- statement by the LSSP

The fifth Presidential Election is to be held on the November 17. At this election the people have to choose an Executive President with tremendous powers to rule the country for a six-year term.

Depending on the outcome of this election, there is little doubt that the composition of the Parliament too will undergo a change, after a possible General Election. Therefore in choosing a President, the people have to exercise the greatest care and they should be clear about the policies of the two main contenders, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party said yesterday.

It said, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse, stands for a continuation of the policies that the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) Government commenced in April 2004. Basically a mixed economy in which the State plays a controlling role and the development process makes a genuine effort to address the needs of the poor while protecting national interests and the Government follows an independent foreign policy.

An attempt is being made to resist IMF/World Bank pressures. Mahinda Rajapakse has always been sympathetic to the interests of the workers, farmers and the poor and under his leadership there is a greater possibility of moving in a progressive direction.

In contrasts Ranil Wickremesinghe is a conservative committed to furthering the policy needs of the multinational corporations and of the Bush administration in the USA. In foreign policy matters this has been exemplified by Ranil’s defense of the US invasion of Iraq at the UN and his inclusion of an American citizen in the Sri Lanka delegation to the WTC Summit in Cancan, Mexico in 2003.

He is committed to implementing the Regaining Sri Lanka policy document developed by the IMF/World Bank, which was started by the UNP - led Government of 2001/04.

According to this role of the State in the economy will be minimised and the private sector will be the engine of growth led by market forces. State income will be reduced by the further reduction of direct taxes (on the rich) and taxes on luxury goods and the privatisation of income generating Government enterprises.

Exploitative private monopolies will be set up in key sectors of the economy such as electricity and water. State expenditure will be cut by reducing welfare services and rural infrastructure and development costs. By giving village land to agri-business multinationals rural society will be disrupted and the rural unemployed will be forced into the hands of the underworld in the rapidly expanding urban slums, as in the rest of the Third World.

The levels of unemployment will increase further by cutting jobs in the Government service and the closure of local industrial and agricultural enterprises in the face of low cost imports aided by traffic cuts.

With the breakdown of our social and cultural values there will be increasing poverty. In the vain attempt to attract foreign direct investment, existing labour laws and regulations will be discarded. Democratic and human rights will be violated and the people’s protests will be crushed by State terror. He will commence his march towards a dictatorship.

Taking into account the above factors the Lanka Sama Samaja Party calls upon the people to defeat Ranil Wickremesinghe and ensure the victory of Mahinda Rajapakse at this Presidential Election.

In doing so, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party wishes to state very clearly that to take forward the development of our country we must seek a very early solution to the ethnic problem affecting the North and East region of our country. In this regard the Lanka Sama Samaja Party underlines the need to take forward the process begun by President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga to solve this problem through negotiation.

A negotiated settlement must be found that is acceptable to all the people in our country. What is required is a wide devolution of power within the framework of a United Sri Lanka in which the people of the North and East will be able to manage their affairs according to their aspirations.

After being elected as the President the Lanka Sama Samaja Party does not expect Mahinda Rajapakse to carry out the same policies that would be adopted by Ranil Wickremesinghe as President.

Excuses of pressures or constraints of any nature would be totally unacceptable. What we expect of Mahinda Rajapakse as the President is to carry out a programme of strengthening the national economy and providing welfare measures to the people without in any way privatising any of the key sectors of our economy.

In this view the Lanka Sama Samaja Party is firmly of the position that the struggle of the progressive forces is not merely one of defeating the UNP but of countering imperialism itself in its policies pursued through the world financial institutions and such of their agents as the UNP and other conservative forces.

The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is committed to mobilise the progressive forces in support of Mahinda Rajapakse and we are confident that he understands the priorities of those forces.

The press release further added that Mahinda’s stance on the national question is not acceptable to LSSP and his economic policy is not very clear.

The LSSP, SLPM and the JVP are campaigning separately by addressing its members and issued a special leaflet supporting Mahinda’s candidature.

courtesy Daily News

Sri Lanka’s buttock brouhaha

Tom Whipple

‘It is the intention of Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe to generate a ‘mod’ farmer without hanging cheeks and whose buttocks are not visible as in the traditional clothing.” So read a pre-election press release this month by one Dr Rajitha Senaratne, Sri Lankan MP and member of the leading opposition United National Party (UNP), whose leader, the aforementioned Mr Wickramasinghe, hopes to become president when the country goes to the polls in three weeks’ time.

There are many important issues being contested: recovery from the tsunami, an uneasy ceasefire in the long-running civil war, arguments over corruption. But unwittingly, it seems, Mr Senaratne has touched on an issue equally close to many of his compatriots’ hearts.

Sri Lanka is a conservative country. Westerners are advised to cover their shoulders and legs to avoid attracting attention, and Sri Lankan women bathing in rivers manage, in contravention of all laws of topology, to thoroughly clean themselves while barely ruffling their sari. But there are contradictions. Although the “wet sari” scene is about as risque as local films will venture, these garments - even on portly elderly women - often happily expose the midriff. And workers in rice paddies still wear the traditional loincloth. Known as the amude, this clothing (as the MP was keen to point out) exposes the buttocks. Kind of like an agricultural version of the G-string.

Farmers across the world are a notoriously militant bunch. When aggravated, they are prone to release sheep in inconvenient locations or drive tractors three abreast down motorways. So by wading into the great amude debate, Dr Senaratne was perhaps fortunate to get off with a mild roasting in the letters pages. “Dr Senaratne is talking nonsense,” thundered a PB Godigamuwa from Maharagama. “In Sri Lanka, farmers work in a pool of muddy water. The loincloth is the most suitable attire. They get the wind blowing to their bare bodies, feet and buttocks to enable them to work hard the whole day.”

Back-pedalling soon followed. Proving that the art of spin has successfully crossed the Indian ocean, Dr Senaratne explained that his remarks were actually praising the farmers for having already modernised: “The JVP [a small opposition party] assume that farmers have to be dressed in the amude. But things have changed and today farmers are working in shorts and socialising in jeans and T-shirts.” It remains to be seen how this loincloth flip-flopping will ultimately play at the polls.

Monday October 31, 2005
The Guardian