Daily News Editorial

Demos, and the larger design

13 March 2017

Laws are to be introduced to prevent the current spate of protests and demonstrations in the city impacting negatively on the economy and causing inconvenience and hardship to the public. Until such laws are introduced moves are to be worked out to restrict these demonstrations to one per week, according to the main story in a weekend vernacular newspaper.

The report also states that the decision followed a meeting between both the SLFP and UNP parliamentarians with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe at the parliament complex where it was brought to his attention that the daily run of demonstrations in the city, while causing grave hardship to the public was also leaving in their wake serious economic consequences. Last week UPFA General Secretary Minister Mahinda Amaraweera also highlighted the issue in parliament and suggested designating an area for such demonstrations, to end the chaos, now being witnessed as a result of these demonstrations. The Minister noted that a new trend has been observed recently where people of different walks of life were holding protests and demonstrations which was one of the main reasons for traffic congestion. He also observed that media coverage of these demonstrations have encouraged more of their kind and if the media blackout these demos, the protesters would stop taking to the streets.

Those behind these protests obviously aim to create the maximum damage to the government and will not take kindly to being relegated to some isolated corner in the city. After all, these demonstrations are for public consumption and if the police fire tear gas and baton charge the protestors, so much the better. But things are certainly getting out of hand. Like Minister Amaraweera noted protests have now become commonplace, with the ‘agitators’ only puppets craftily manipulated by sinister political forces.

Things certainly can only hot up in the coming days, with doctors, nurses port workers, farmer organsations etc. planning to stage massive demonstrations against SAITM. How, the private medical college can relate to farmers, only those behind the planned protests will be able to explain, except that it is a well orchestrated attempt by interested parties, with political backing, to cause chaos and disrupt public life on the one hand and target the economy on the other. Last Thursday’s demonstration against SAITM, had, even little schoolchildren holding up placards bearing cryptic slogans which clearly was the work of some mature hand. There was also a candle light procession comprising, almost entirely, of young girls, most of whom, obviously were still in the junior forms of their schools, to whom, the issue surrounding the SAITM would no doubt have been Greek. What is today being witnessed has an uncanny resemblance to the time in the late eighties where schoolchildren were brought onto the streets to protest against the Indo-Lanka Accord by the JVP. Now, with ECTA to be signed in the coming months, there is no doubt that those behind the current spate of protests will stoop to any level, using even school children, to realise their sinister agendas and the government had better be prepared for any eventuality. The protests are also bound to snowball to coincide with the Provincial Council elections that are soon to be held, because it is obvious that regime change is what the masterminds of these protests are after. We say this because the SAITM issue was in existence from 2011, and, except for some feeble protests by the good doctors, never was there demonstrations of the scale and intensity that we are witnessing today.

It will be clear to anyone that these protests are well funded. It is difficult to mobilse the agitations, now on show, without massive financial support. The ultimate objective is to make the government unpopular by a demonstration of numbers and eventually its ouster. The economy too will be another obvious target in this grand plan. Minister Champika Ranawaka the other day stated that the government was losing Rs. 230 billion a year due to the fuel wasted in traffic jams. What this will come to, with the traffic jams we now see, almost on a daily basis in the city, can only be imagined. The government should try to ascertain who is funding these demonstrations which are well organised and systematically planned to cause the maximum damage to the government. The highly expensive posters, plastered countrywide announcing these demos and carrying other anti government slogans, can only be possible from massive funding. Are the funds coming from the billions accumulated by defeated VIP politicians and their former financiers? Are university students and little schoolchildren being used as a cat’s paw in a grand design by those ousted from power to make a comeback? The funds it appears seems inexhaustible given the frequency of these street protests. The situation can only further deteriorate, if the government keeps on hedging, without taking firm action in this regard. As already mentioned, Trade Unions are girding their loins for a massive showdown. Designating a specific area for demonstrations is only part of the solution. The government should get wise to the undercurrents of these protests and agitations.