Why are these happening in Sri Lanka?
We are currently facing a severe economic crisis. Sri Lanka has survived 30 years of civil war, Easter Sunday bomb attacks in 2019 and of course the covid pandemic.
But nothing has ever gotten this bad. Of course, all of the above (and many others) have had a negative impact on our economy. This is not something that happened suddenly. Our economy has been in decline for a long time now.
But the primary cause is our corrupt leadership (As you can see from the arbitrary arrests and curfews being imposed currently).
70% of Sri Lanka's budget is controlled by the Rajapaksa family. By a single family who runs the government.
Our president is Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Our prime minister is Mahinda Rajapaksa (former president). Our finance minister is Basil rajapaksa. Chamal Rajapaksa is the minister of irrigation. They are brothers!
They are more rajapaksas in our parliaments - handling different ministries - including the youth ministry and one of them is a cabinet minister.
Basically, they have been running our country and controlling our budget and basically exploiting the fuck out of us. While many of us knew it was bad, there is nothing we could because they are political majority in the country.
But now they've run us to the fucking ground. We have power cuts lasting up to 13 hours a day. The dollar rate has sky rocketed (from 170 rupees to 330). We have no fuel (hence no electricity). Public transport is basically nonexistent. Schools have closed down. Hospitals are operating at capacity - and without power. There are people - I shit you not - who only eat one meal a day because our cost of living is through the roof. Because we have no foreign currency in the country, we can't import anything because we can't pay for anything. This means we don't have medications, basic food staples and many other things because we important all of this.
In essence, it is a clusterfuck. Biggest in our history.
So, people are really fucking frustrated - and rightly so. There are riots and protests in the streets every day. Journalists and activists are being arbitrarily arrested (and assaulted) under the PTA (prevention of terrorism act) because anyone who speaks against the government is now being labelled as "extremists".
I don't know how or when things are going to get better. It doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon because things are really, really bad right now. I only hope the damage will be minimal as we find our way out of this possibly in the next few months (or years).
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