Speaking in parliament on Sri Lanka’s new budget, Tamil parliamentarian C V Wigneswaran slammed Colombo’s continued inflated defence expenditure, questioning whether the government is “expecting another war” and “if so with whom?”
“Whom is our government afraid of?” questioned the Tamil Makkal Thesiya Kootani (TMTK) lawmaker and former Supreme Court justice asking whether it was the “Tamils or the Indians or the Western Countries”.
“Why are we arranging for war time security needs rather than post war security needs?” he continued.
“Are you not cutting your nose to spite your face? Are you not clothing yourself with armaments, artillery, armour and infantry in the land domain and logistics in the maritime domain because you are suspicious of sections of your own citizenry who had been reacting to your prejudicial discriminatory unilateral activities of the past?”
The budget should be bettered focused on the North-East which, faced with decades of destruction and continued military occupation, lags behind the rest of the island said Wigneswaran.
“All we want is the right to look after ourselves in our traditional areas and govern it the way we want,” he said.
“Even Eleven years after the end of the war Northern and Eastern Provinces remain the regions with the highest poverty headcount ratio. While the country’s poverty headcount ratio that is the proportion of the population living below the poverty line, — was 4.1 percent in 2016, Northern and Eastern Provinces had poverty headcount ratios of 7.7 percent and 7.3 percent respectively. According to data from the Department of Census and Statistics, all four districts with double-digit poverty headcount ratios are in Northern and Eastern Provinces.”
“Today’s position as far as the Tamil speaking are concerned is pathetic,” he concluded. “After 11 years since the war ended war affected Provinces still lay behind the rest of the Country economically. So it is time you granted self government to the North and East and allow us and our diaspora to help you and us economically.”
See the full text of his speech here.
