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Credibility,
and propriety One must straightaway state that what the LTTE says is not the gospel. If that organisation has strong words for the President of this country, so be it. The LTTE is a separatist organisation opposed by the whole country, including many Tamils whose sole representative it claims to be. The issue here, however, is something else. The LTTE just doesn't believe the President. Elsewhere in this newspaper we publish a statement made by the new Information Minister contesting the headline of our lead story last week wherein it is stated that the President told the TNA MPs that she had the constitutional powers to bypass Parliament, if need be, to grant concessions for devolving power. Our rejoinder to that statement comes in the form of definitive quotes from two of the TNA MPs who were present at that very meeting, confirming that she had indeed said so. The fact that the new UPFA government is in the throes of a crisis need not be laboured. Apart from the fact that they are a minority government desperately on the look-out for a working majority, there is serious internal disagreement between the government's coalition partners, especially between the PA and the JVP, mainly on the direction of the negotiating process with the LTTE. Resolving those issues we shall leave to the parties themselves, other than to say that the President and her party's athletic twists and turns, pole-vaults, somersaults and high-jumps would qualify them for a medal at the Olympics were 'Politricks' to be made an international sport. On the second issue of propriety, what the Political Editor says is that the President's current visit to Britain is full of darkness and mystery. Firstly, she left the country unannounced and the people she works for would only have known she had gone if they read our last issue or saw a photograph of her with the British Foreign Secretary at a London hotel. Up to now, her Spokesman has had nothing to say about this visit; he does not even know if it is a private visit, or an official visit. That is how mysterious the visit is. But we all now know, from 'reliable sources' so to say, that she is in Britain to attend her daughter's convocation. Then, why the secrecy when she has every right to be there? The answer our Political Editor offers is that if it is a 'private visit' then she must foot the bill with her personal funds (like all parents who attend such functions anywhere), not the tax-payers of this country, who are in any event, supposedly less than 200,000 in a country of 19 million. The President, all Cabinet ministers, all MPs and thousands of public servants do not pay taxes, at least on their salaries. The estimated cost of maintaining the public service of this country, and this includes not only salaries, but handsome entertainment and other allowances, vehicles and maintenance thereof, petrol, drivers, telephones, houses, trips abroad, car permits and a whole gamut of such perks - is Rs. 260 billion per year. Public servants were exempted from taxes in a bid to attract people who were felt to be leaving the public service in the lurch and gravitating towards the private sector which offered better terms. In Singapore, they took a different direction - they paid the public servants better than what the private sector could offer. But they were taxed like everybody else. In England when there was an uproar about Royalty being treated differently when it came to paying taxes, the Queen of England herself decided, in the face of public pressure to pay income tax. The President of the USA pays taxes, or he is supposed to. Then, last year came the tax amnesty to exempt even the few who are supposed to pay taxes in this country, all this creating different classes of people in this country. And those who benefit from these amnesties and allowances, emoluments and foreign trips, are always those in the upper echelons of the political establishment, their hangers-on, and the Brahmins of the public service, not the thousands of those in the lower brackets. This is what directs one's attention to the way public funds are squandered by those at the top. The JVP, whatever their shortcomings, are still trying to make a difference to all this. But they are hitting their heads on a rock, it seems. The carnival goes on. When the high-profile convert strictly private foreign visits to semi-official ones by asking for appointments from their counterparts; when MPs have a wholesome breakfast in a virtually functus Parliament for a price less than a 'kahata' in tea kiosk; and travel in Pajeros when their voters hang on to dear life (see our Plus feature story on page 13) to get to work and back home - this is when the whole edifice begins to crumble and fall on our collective heads. The leaders must show the way by example, not by deceit or conceit. Start paying your taxes for a start, like everyone else in the world does. They might, then, have more feeling for the tax-payers' money they so freely spend. |
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