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What is all this hullabaloo about Marxist JVP Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe being rich, as if it’s a crime to be rich in this country?

Though JVP Minister Samantha Vidyaratna, himself a relatively rich man as shown in his asset declaration form for the years 2023 and 2024, said at an election rally last year, ‘If any politician is rich, he is either a scoundrel or a rogue,’ it’s no crime if he had earned it from the honest sweat of his brow.

One thing must be proudly said of this red-shirted brigade: they’re all bleeding capitalists at heart, as revealed in their asset declaration forms.

And as for JVP’s former Marxist trade union firebrand, Wasantha Samarasinghe, he is not a middle-of-the-road capitalist but of the top bracket. Today with his left hand he holds the workers’ hammer and peasants’ sickle, while with his right he holds title to land and buildings, deposit certificates and even blue-chip cryptocurrency, and has simultaneously pole vaulted to the upper rungs of both the political and capitalist ladders.

And, pray, why not? Fortune that comes uninvited is not to be kicked out merely because one propounds the Marxist creed that all private property must be nationalised and that all men must be equally levelled in the earthly dust.

Opposition politicians and social media activists crucify Wasantha Samarasinghe for leading a life of pretence: for being a radical Marxist by day and a closet capitalist by night.

But when was a law enacted that made it compulsory to flaunt one’s riches? Or prohibited one from living the austere life of the ascetic?

Wasantha Samarasinghe is the victim of the Lanka mindset, continuously embedded with vitriolic hate and malicious envy for another’s riches, earned as Wasantha Samarasinghe has earned with enterprise, diligence and perseverance.

JVP Trade Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe did not, like the nouveau riche often do, flaunt his newfound riches nor boast about his inherited wealth. He only made it known solely on a need-to-know basis to the Bribery Commission.

He has not made a song and dance about his personal assets but has discreetly declared them—as he must—to the Bribery Commission, as the law mandatorily bids him to do.

Peeping Toms—who have nothing better to do than peep into MPs’ declared assets and gloatingly drool over their riches—will now be free to intensely probe the assets of each MP on the Bribery Commissions’ website.

According to the Daily Mirror published on Wednesday, Wasantha Samarasinghe’s asset declaration made to the Bribery Commission is as follows:

He has two commercial buildings, one worth 150 million and the other, a three-storey commercial building worth 75 million, totalling a combined worth of 225 million rupees. Furthermore, he has declared a house worth 10 million and two solar power units worth 6.5 million and 3.25 million, respectively. And that’s not all.

He has a Toyota Prius car worth 15 million and 17.5 gold sovereigns worth 4.5 million and two fixed deposits, one worth 1.1 million and the other worth Rs 650,000. He also has 21,000 shares in LOLC worth 12 million and 3000 crypto chips worth 1 million. He’s worth a total of 279 million.

Now the income he gets from various sources. He receives a rental income of 5.1 million and 7 million. A company income of 3 million and solar power income of 200,000. All in all, he gets an income of 15.3 million.

As said before, fortune had come to him uninvited, and he had not kicked her out but taken her in, and she had not left ever since.

But the people were not too happy that this working-class hero of the JVP, the party that had fiercely fought the most to overthrow the capitalist system, first through the barrel of the gun, and when that failed, through the democratic power of the ballots, to free the worker of his crippling capitalist manacles and enthrone him in a Marxist state in the topmost seat of power, was not what he seemed.

The asset declaration he had made had cast a different light on him.

In a bid to clear his name, Wasantha Samarasinghe appeared on Swarnavahini TV on Monday. After thanking the interviewer for giving him the chance to give his own explanation, he began relating his rags-to-riches autobiography to the attentive audience.

He said, ‘I was born and raised in Thabuthegama. Everyone in the village knew us since we have been there for generations. I come from a family of 12, my father and my mother included. When I went to campus, I got the idea to start a class here. We had a number of lands in the village, so in 1997 I started on one of them. At the beginning we had used tree logs for stools and had only a thatched hut. Then a tent hut. Then a concrete building, and that’s how it developed. It’s worth 225 million now. I have declared it. I rent it now, and I have declared the rental income as well.’

But as every businessman knows, there are ups and downs in any business. Perhaps it was during a bleak patch in his life; he was reduced to penury, and if it weren’t for his friends and fellow JVP supporters, he would not have survived.

His plaintive cry, well publicised and echoed in a TV interview, has him saying how a spirit of camaraderie existed in the party and bonded them together. ‘It’s like this. Let’s say I have to go to Ratnapura for some work; then the supporters there will give me some money for fuel and, on the way back, will give me some vegetables, some plantains and, if they have, some rice. If I go to Anuradhapura, some rice, some coconuts. In Kurunegala they will give me some coconuts and some dry fish if they have. That day I went to Puttalam, and I got Rs 3000, I went to Anuradhapura, and I got Rs 3000; I went to Batticaloa, and I got Rs 5000.’

Although being against private property throughout his Marxist life, the enterprise, the diligence and the perseverance Wasantha Samarasinghe has shown while living a stoic life, perhaps, to avert the evil envious eye of jealousy from falling on the wealth he had acquired on his way to the top, only goes to show, you can’t keep a good man down.

One more thing. He still hasn’t revealed to the people how he and some others in the JVP top brass had—for them and them alone—successfully exorcised the seventy-six-year ‘sape’.

Charlie Kirk, who was he? Charlie Kirk must have been an extraordinary guy, hardly known across the shores of America, as a madman’s bullet almost made him be immortalised in rock on Mount Rushmore in the hills of South Dakota, where four US presidents’ faces are engraved. So who was this thirty-one-year-old guy, and what had he done to make him so revered in death and drive four past US presidents to go down on their knees and pay fulsome tribute to him and make President Trump not only deliver the breaking news of his tragic death to the media but also announce he will be leading the mourners at the funeral? KIIRK: Americas mourns the death of stout fighter for freedom of speech So who was he? Was he some kind of cult leader, some mystery guru, some mystical world preacher whose advent on earth was Trump’s secret weapon as peacemaker, to be unleashed when the world had gone sick of wars and was finally ready for a lasting peace? So who was Kirk that had made America weep and President Trump cry when he was shot in the neck by a gunman gone off his rocker? To those of us who hadn’t heard of his existence till he was shot last week, Charlie Kirk was a 31-year-old media star who had over 10,000 followers for his YouTube channels and around 3000 regularly attending question and answer sessions on various university grounds. Amongst thousands of YouTubers in the States, what was so special about his message that made all presidents, from both sides of the political divide, grieve his death as a national loss? The Chicago-born and raised Kirk was a college dropout at the age of 19 to found Turning Point USA, an organisation which initially aimed to bring all religious communities under one single tent. But the initial aims of Turning Point USA soon turned to exclusively embrace Christian Nationalism. It began prompting a Christian form of government and a Christian population, going against Lincoln’s Gettysburg address of America being a nation where all men are created equal. But this radical shift from liberal thinking was wise, even though it had strong tones of religious discrimination. Turning Point began to grow in size, numbers and riches. His mass rallies, aimed at the young, had been credited with generating interest in political conservatism among American youth. It had become the rage, and his voice, among a cacophony of voices, soon became its official voice, and he, the country’s chief influencer. He soon became the chief evangelist hailing hallelujahs for Trump, ending up as a close ally of the present president with a seat in his inner circle. But he wasn’t loved by all, with hate shadowing him to Utah Valley University. He had warned about the dangers of silenced dialogue and political polarisation, and on a bright summer September morn on the 10th of this month, it ominously became true. Answering a question on gun control, his young life was tragically cut down by a gunman’s bullet, with his wife of four years and their two children in the audience. The assassin’s father identified him from pictures published on social media. After accosting his son, the 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and with his admittance, the father wisely advised him to surrender rather than risk being shot while on the run. Whatever was Kirk’s charisma, whatever it was that made past presidents of the Democrat Party, whom Kirk relentlessly opposed, pay honour with tributes and grieve his untimely death, Charlie Kirk was truly an extraordinary guy.