President’s 60 units ‘relief’ enough to light up only two bulbs - Tissa

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s May Day pledge not to enforce the electricity tariff hike on consumers using less than 60 units was meaningless, since it could only light up two bulbs over a period of a month, the UNP said yesterday.General Secretary of the UNP, Tissa Attanayake, addressing a news conference in Colombo, said that the President was playing tricks on the masses while permitting the Power and Energy Ministry to do as it pleased.Rajapaksa had also pledged "relief" to those using between 61 to 180 units.
But it would take effect only if a Gazette notification was issued he said adding that words had not been matched with action even one week after the announcement had been made.



The ongoing verbal duel between the former and incumbent Power and Energy Ministers, Patali Champika Ranawaka and Pavithra Wanniarachchi, as to who was responsible for the electricity price increase, had been well orchestrated for the President to escape blame while taking the credit for the defeat of the LTTE, which was a joint effort by a cross section of society. This had been the trade mark strategy of the those who wielded real power within the UPFA government, the MP said.

All political strategies, he observed had their life span and the bubble was about to burst with the masses having at long last realized that they were being taken for a jolly good ride by the rulers, who even four years after the war had ended were still asking them to tighten their belts.

The UNP would continue to educate the people on the extent to which the Rajapaksa regime had ruined the economy and mortgaged it to foreign and local lending institutions for generations to come. In this regard a leaflet campaign would be held in Colombo Fort on May 9 and in Borella on May 15, he said.