Sunday Punch 3
The Finance minister has already announced that it will bring in more than 2 billion dollars to the national kitty. It’s another sign of the benefits to accrue with Saturn’s move to Sagittarius. But as the Sunday Punch commented on January 1st, the bounty will have to be earned with honest sweat. The European Sirisena was given the Health Ministry portfolio and had nothing more to do with it as minister.
Immediately upon becoming president, Sirisena was determined to finish what he had started in earnest and valued more than his ministry. In February in 2015, not after a month of being elected President, he toured the area and ordered work to recommence immediately on the Lanka’s biggest multi faceted irrigation project. The groundbreaking ceremony for Ehala Elahara Ela, the longest canal ever built in the country which will take the precious waters to northern farmers to irrigate their lands was also conducted. It is claimed that the Rajapaksa government dragged their feet in building the dam and canal because it was to be used as a bargaining chip - the Sinhalese gift to the Tamils it is said, water for peace.
On Wednesday, when the waters of the great rivers of Lanka were marshaled to flow prosperity to the people’s door and make green the barren land they occupied, the president declared that though the present financial crisis was not of his own making but a financial burden inherited by his government, he would meet the challenge to usher in an era of affluence to the nation.
If that wasn’t enough for a fortnight of good news development plans to herald the nation’s expected economic boom, there was more to come to add to the surfeit. Even as Saturn’s move this month on the 26th from turbulent Scorpio, house of the war lord Mars, to the benevolent dwelling of Sagittarius, home of the Zodiac’s sage Jupiter, portends a well-to-do year for Lanka provided the leaders work to make hay while the planets shine on the land, the Central Bank Governor chipped in with his own bit of good tidings. Coomaraswamy predicted last week that Lanka’s economy was expected to expand 5.5 – 6.0% in 2017, up from 4.55.0% last year; and that he expects more domestic and foreign investment this year.
But if the rainbow set to light on the economic front was one way for the national government to take its fight to the enemy camp and banish the clouds of pessimism the Rajapaksa regime had blown across the landscape, it did not lose sight of the need to fortify its political banks that faced the threat of erosion from the persistent dredging of the joint opposition. And if the economic news was the sugar, the political bulletin was the bitter pill.
(Please see Sunday Punch 2)