The country’s economy cannot be shored up without plugging the holes such as MPs pensions, mansions for ministers and maintenance of former presidents, security and other provisions for politicos, JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake says.

Addressing the national convention of the JVP-led NPP at Imperial Monarch at Sri Jayewardenepura, yesterday, the JVP leader said politics should be rid of parasites. “It should be public  service and the politicians should be made to serve people without enjoying special privileges. This could be done only by the NPP as none of the other traditional parties would do so,” Dissanayake said.

He said that the bane of the country was corrupt political culture which should be changed by people by defeating the corrupt politicians. “What we have is a political leadership that earns commissions out of antigen tests on people. It is a leadership that steals from fertilisers, while farmers suffer without fertilisers. We must first put an end to this corrupt political culture. The so-called mega development projects they implement is not love for the people but for the commissions that they pocket themselves. Such corrupt projects are similar to a filaria leg that prevents the economy from moving forward. The former auditor general once said that when the country’s total debt was around 11 trillion rupees, we had only 1.8 trillion assets. That means the rest has ended up in pockets of corrupt rulers. Can any ruler of the past explain to us what they did with the loans this country had taken. The debts at 1950 was at Rs 1000 million and recently it passed the Rs 1,630,000 million mark. This country cannot be saved as long as corrupt politics prevailed. People demand that these corrupt rulers should be punished and their ill-gotten assets be taken back by the state. Only an administration led by the NPP could do that. We pledge to do that,” Dissanayake said.

NPP General Secretary Dr. Nihal Abeysinghe, Ex-co members Attorney-at-Law Lal Wijenayake, Prof Liyanage Amarakeerthi and Chaturanga Abeysinghe and NPP MP Dr. Harini Amarasuriya also addressed the convention.