Singhalese monopolise Sri Lanka's national wealth - TNA MP

[TamilNet, Saturday, 20 November 2004, 00:29 GMT]
“This budget has been made to look after the interests of the Sinhala people. The Tamil people have been totally denied the right to share the national wealth of this country. Under Article 148 of the Sri Lankan constitution public finance is in the full control of this Parliament. This is a Sinhala Buddhist dominated Parliament. It means that the Singhalese have monopoly over national wealth. Hence the Tamil people can never hope to benefit from Sri Lanka’s budget”, said Mr. S. Gajendran, Tamil National Alliance MP for Jaffna, speaking on the budget in Sri Lanka’s Parliament Friday.

“The Parliament and thereby the Singhalese have the sole right to decide on how to spend or invest the national wealth of this country. The five million rupees we get under the decentralized budget are little bones thrown to us. But we do not have the right to decide how to spend it”.

“We have to have our rightful share of the national wealth, the share which we Tamils created. And we should have the right to spend it for the benefit of our people. The Tigers had to come up with the Interim Self Governing Authority proposal so that we can have a mechanism to utilize the wealth we create in the Tamil homeland for the benefit of our people”, he said.