By Piyasena Dissanayake

UNP Chairman and former minister Vajira Abeywardena yesterday said that those protesting against the government should not get their priorities mixed up if they wanted to achieve something meaningful.

Addressing a meeting held in Galle, Abeywardena said that there were two major slogans shouted by the protesters. “One slogan is calling the President to resign. The second main slogan is about the economic crisis. If the protesters and political parties, supporting them, fail to read the situation and decide what they really need it is impossible for them to achieve their goals,” the UNP Chairman said.

“There is a demand for an interim government. Suppose we form an interim government. Will that government be able to deliver diesel, petrol, kerosene, gas and medicine to the people? Will the forming of that interim government replenish the stocks in the markets so that people could buy whatever they want? There is another demand to do away with the 20th Amendment to the Constitution and enacting the 19th Amendment. Will such an act provide relief to the people? We must first identify the real problem.

“We have to pay around billion US dollars as loan repayment installments in July. If we cannot do so then we would be declared a bankrupt nation. Our leader Ranil Wickremesinghe explained in Parliament last week that this country needed national policies that should not be changed at least for the next 20 years to get out of the present crisis. We have only a single seat in Parliament and there are 224 other MPs, but none of them can come up with a better and feasible solution.

“The problem we are facing is not changing the President, Prime Minister, 20th Amendment or the 19th Amendment or forming the interim government. Such acts will not deliver petrol, diesel or other essential items to the market. What we need is a sound economic plan that can deliver them to the people,” the UNP Chairman said.