The five-day ‘March to Colombo’ concluded on Monday with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa urging the Sri Lankan government to stop adding economic burden on the people and “selling the country to foreign interests”.
Giving an account of the Sinhala speech of the former President who addressed the rally near the Town Hall here, Tissa Vitharana, chief of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, a constituent of the Joint Opposition (JO), said Mr. Rajapaksa had cautioned the government that “if you continue [your approach], we will not stop. We will get rid of you”. The march was a “reaction” of the people against what the government had been doing in the last 18 months, Prof. Vitharana quoted Mr. Rajapaksa as saying.
Answering questions by The Hindu , Namal Rajapaksa, MP from the Hambantota district in the Southern Province and the former President’s eldest son, blamed the government for “the stagnation of the country’s economy”. “The only thing they do is to blame the previous government.” He added that the people are “frustrated” due to various measures of the government on subsidies and the levy of the Value-Added Tax. He wondered why a government, “talking of good governance”, was not holding elections to local bodies.
Replying to the criticism that the JO was indulging in “divisive politics”, he said: “It [such criticism] has been there since 2005 [when Mr. Rajapaksa became President]. They do not have a new argument. They have to... start working for the people, without blaming the previous government.”
