All the VAT for New Year with love from President
And some real Christmas 337m dollar cheer with love from the IMF
It was all the VAT for the forthcoming year with love from the President as he sent his early New Year greetings to dampen the spirit of 22 million citizens who had harboured the fond hope that next year, at least, would be better than the preceding one. That things could not get worse. It did. :
And to ensure the gravity sunk in, it was accompanied by the familiar refrain, ‘difficult times are far from over.’ It was all that was needed to give a rousing kickoff to a dawning new year replete.
If that was the hamper the people received from their Government, they little realised it was one more giant boulder they would have to carry to lay the solid foundation upon which their future will be built. Alas, what future can those who eke out a hand-to-mouth existence see, when they cannot see a future beyond their present meal?
They can hardly be blamed if they fail to realise that the nation-building endeavour calls for great sacrifice from the masses and that it is not merely the pastime of a well-fattened Parliament whose privileged members continuously seem to live beyond not only the nation’s means but even beyond their own.
No doubt, the IMF had demanded stringent reductions in public spending to reduce the budget deficit. But has the Government made any concerted effort to cut back on the rich lifestyles of its own cadres, taken action to curb wastage and, most of all, taken deterrent legal measures to eliminate corruption, and shown, apart from hollow words, zero tolerance towards this institutionalized curse which the IMF identified in its forensic report two months ago, as the biggest drain on Sri Lanka’s meagre resources?
Or has the Government, instead, taken the easy way out to safeguard its own privileges and perks and reduce the shortfall by treating the Lankan public as an always available convenient, helpless, muzzled scapegoat with the cornucopian horn of plenty to nourish the Government’s inexhaustible wants while, simultaneously, piling load after load of intolerable taxes upon its slender back without any concern as to what moment it will snap?
The people would have more stoically borne the burdens imposed if they were informed, as done in certain Western countries, on the exact areas in which their hard-earned money would be spent, and the following year given a realistic assurance that it had been utilized for the purpose it had been raised rather than given the flimsy pretext of building visionary edifices in the air for the people to wake from the utopian dream to the most prosperous and powerful state on earth in the miracle year 2048.
The only realism in surreal Sri Lanka is the solace and cheer that the IMF had approved the second tranche of 337 million dollars. Else we would have faced the grim prospect of even higher taxes in the New Year. Thank God for merciful Christmas blessings.