Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe last night declared that no one can stop his government from signing the controversial Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) with India.
Ranil
“We have the majority in Parliament and we are going ahead with this agreement, and no one can stop us,” he told reporters on Saturday while touring Hambantota to inspect the airport, port, the convention centre and hospital.
The Prime Minister said that his government has launched a series of initiatives in an effort to generate 1 million new jobs for the youth.
“There are people shouting, and demanding us to not sign the agreement with India, who is shouting? The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). They are going on strike, but when they strike it doesn’t affect the government, it only affects the people,” he said.
Wickremesinghe also termed those opposing the agreement as ‘traitors’.
He also added that the GMOA had put up a bogus agreement on their website claiming it to be the agreement they government plans to sign with India. “This is a bogus document,” he added.
roger / February 22, 2016
RW is making a big mistake by not being transparent about the agreement. It is time to present the agreement to public and allow frank discussion. RW is doing a foolish thing by disregarding genuine concern of the public and the professionals. He is going ahead because he wants to push it through. If he does it this will be his Waterloo.
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Alahakoon / February 22, 2016
In 2015 figures, India is the 3rd largest economy as per GDP (PPP) and in GDP (current price) it is the 7th largest economy in the world. Lot of analysts predict that India would be 4th biggest economy (GDP-CP) within 2 years.
http://knoema.com/nwnfkne/world-gdp-ranking-2015-data-and-charts
Agreements of economic cooperations with economically powerful countries like India should be done with advices & opinions of economic & technical professionals by the Gov (not only with GMOA professionals) . Theoretically, in democratic system, public elect selected number of leaders to lead the country by doing the best for the country, because this kind of complex economic decisions couldn’t be made by general public, but it should by leaders with the help of experts in the field, for the betterment of the country..
We recently saw, GMOA become best economic & technical advisers of the country. They make foolish public statements saying Indian engineering education was one of worst and 80% of Indian engineers were unemployed.. General public says “hooray”… we are much better than Indians.. Do our journalists do simple Google search before publishing these hatred remarks of our medical doctors?? My guess is that Indian police said SL Doctors were involved in human body parts racquet, after that GMOA became big Indian basher.. As I know most of larger private hospitals in SL were started with huge Indian medical professional involvement. Was GMOA critical about it at that time?? No.. because our GMOA is economic and engineering experts…
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sarojini / February 24, 2016
Is this anywhere near the freedom of information act. ????_They boast so much about how they are presenting this bill in. Parliament the
do as I say principle coming into action now.
What a pathetic situation and the. SL are held to ransom. In a way our people deserve this nonsence._
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Real Peace / February 22, 2016
Good news for Sri Lanka and Ranil W. At last, Ranil is showing off his backbone!
If MaRa messes up with Ranil, India will be Ranil’s safety net. India will flex all its muscles to defend Ranil.
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K.A Sumanasekera / February 22, 2016
What a joke this Batalanada is..
New Zealanad hosts a special festival to celebrate the 400,000 Chinese tourists who visited the Kiwi Land last year.
Australia got one Million of them and and collected 8 Billion Dollars last year.
Both are now working hard to boost these numbers by extra 20 % at least, this year.
Here is Batalanada not only trying to give what ever few jobs we have in Health care, IT, and Hospitality to Hindians.but also under cut our local businesses, and allow the Hindians to flood our market with cheap and nasty Indian goods.
Fair enough making life easy for Elite , Anglicans and the Vellalas,
What the hell are our Dalit kids going to do after graduating from Uni , letalone after dropping out from high school.
Isn’t Batalanada’s plan to break up what ever influence the Dalits have and restore the old status quo, which his great uncles maintained after the Suddha’s handed our land to them ?
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Native Vedda / February 22, 2016
KASmaalam K.A Sumanasekera
“What the hell are our Dalit kids going to do after graduating from Uni,letalone after dropping out from high school.”
They could take up mugging, start periodic patriotic riots, join the war criminals, send their women folks to middle east, become member of thieving political parties or a politician, ……….. There are plenty of opportunities.
If you can they too can.
“Isn’t Batalanada’s plan to break up what ever influence the Dalits have and restore the old status quo,”
of Mafiosis.
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K.A Sumanasekera / February 22, 2016
Dear Native,
You are bloody right mate,
Once Batalanada consolidates his power and restore the old status quo, Your Elite , Anglicans and the Velallas can have a ready source of supply source to do their House Work, Do the washing. Go to the Market and entertain the frisky babies and horny dads just like in the good old days.
Not that it does not happen even now, but the going rate for a domestic is minimum LKR 5000 for the poor teenage girls from the Estate Community who can’t go to the Mid East.
And also your Political mates can employ them to do Electioneering in Grandpass with AK 47s.
Did you have Galleon in mind when you said Mafiosa.
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LankanfromLanka / February 22, 2016
Wow Sumane, this last post is a hit parade of all your racist name calling. Your points also make no sense. You are a the only Dalit. Stick to commenting on Australia. You don’t fit in there and should try and better your situation there. Leave Sri Lanka to the Sri Lankans.
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BBS Rep / February 22, 2016
I am for ECTA not only with India but with as many countries as possible. Most certainly with China.
Britain has an ECTA with India and none the losers for it. Well known British brands such as Jaguar and Land Rover were going down hill. Since their take over the Indians have successfully resurrected these companies.
Xenophobia will not make Sri Lanka richer nor better. Xenophobia favours only the fraudster politicians and their cohorts and the pin- bath eating army of hamuduruwas.
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Yasa / February 23, 2016
There’s difference British companies such as jaguar were taken over (acuired) by Tata ( one of India’s biggest conglomerate) and what they did was they started production lines in India which reduced the cost (cause of cheap labor) and made it profitable jst think of that from the point of our garment industry what if companies such as bradix mas was acuired by Indian company and started to move production lines to India , how much jobs would we loose . Unfortunately companies such as Virtusa is moving the core software development tasks to India (cause they have a Indian head now ) and trying to keep support tasks only in Sri Lanka . I’m not against the ecta but I’m concerned about the professional who are going g to come , if we have a framework such as only selected professional will be allowed to enter with relevant experience that would be ideal . Currently we don’t have any idea on what the devil looks like .
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bulath / February 23, 2016
Tata ( one of India’s biggest conglomerate) and what they did was they started production lines in India which reduced the cost (cause of cheap labor)
Rubbish you just blatantly Made that up JLR doesn’t have Any Big Production lines in India( only a very small plant catering to the Indian market) Major Facilities are Still very much in the UK , others , the biggest being in China ,followed by smaller assembly lines in kenya,Pakistan,Malaysia & turkey.
With Barzil & Austria to come in to manufacturing.
the fact of the matter is JLR was sold to Tata ,with any technology transfer Thats It!! so before you pluck example out of the sky just educate your self on the example taken
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sarojini / February 24, 2016
The situation in the. UK and. S L cannot be compared. UK has strict rules and regulations. and all the employees in these factories are British,not Indian. This would not happen in. SL.
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SB / February 22, 2016
I want to know from Ranil if the UNP which was in the doldrums ,have forgotten how to govern? people don’t see any work done cost of living is going beyond belief.For all the talk there is no action.If you take agriculture which employes the most number of people, no one has any idea on action that will be taken to sort out whether fertilizer is to be imported on the same subsidy levels or not.Not a single kg of fertilizer is available with the private sector .The government sector one has to go from pillar to post with no fertilzer even after 2 months of running from pillar to post.
It is time UNP and the so called SLFP get down to work.Yesterdays paper showed a cartoon of the people looking bewildered whilst The President is going round the world.They also should have shown Ranil how to talk first to all stake holders rather than issuing idiotic statements .He thinks he is tough but cling to power he will fall on his knees.
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CITIZEN / February 22, 2016
We are very disappointed with your comment, remember you are elected as prime minister by the citizens of Sri Lanka for a change, once you are elected now talking in different way,
Why you cannot listen to the country citizens request and you are saying that no one can stop his government from signing the controversial Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) with India.
Keep it in your mind we citizens who toppled the previous government with our valuable votes, if you talk too much like this the same fate will happen to your government too.
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mewan / February 22, 2016
Nimal Fernando has correctly and professionally identified the root issue – how did this agreement come about? I think as most people have acknowledge here, there is an obligation on the part of the government to reveal to the public all details of this agreement, not just foolishly say that this is good for Sri Lanka and we are going ahead with this agreement just because we can. It is a sign of a weak leader and a week government.
Unlike 20 or 30 years ago, today Sri Lanka have highly qualified professionals who have gone all over the world to obtain high quality education and training. Sri Lankan IT professionals and engineers are second to none in my experience of their performance overseas. Because of this it is baffling to me how these, probably very lowly qualified and trained Indian IT professionals are going to add to SL economy. As it has again being said here, highly qualified Indian professionals are likely to find jobs in more lucrative places than SL. Further IT is not what it drummed up to be now compared to several years go. IT skills are fast developing above and over just doing mundane work such as maintaining operating systems and other rudimentary IT work that anyone could qualify taking an IT course. The true IT professionals are those with degrees in computer science and software engineering. Those are the people that can contribute anything worthwhile and these are the people in high demand all over the world. And if we really want such individuals, I think there are more advance places than India where we should go looking for them, such as Korea, Taiwan and even in Eastern Europe, where there are highly skilled people that we should looking to recruit if we are genuinely interested in improving the true IT capabilities in the country and generate employment. Otherwise this would be nothing more than providing employment of third grade IT guys who are unemployed in India and looking for a way out.
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N.Wimaladasa / February 22, 2016
I am for Free Trade, not for covered operation ,we do want transpiration system of democracy.
Sooner or later we have to have Global Free Trade .
UNP-Ranil.w…. for political manuervaing for the Trade agreement for remain in power at the cost of our nation and people by his political projects.
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Mohan / February 22, 2016
India is producing millions of graduates and professional qualified person every year. They are reasonably talented and have good communication skills. We produce very few talented graduates from government universities. Most graduate are unemployed or under employed. Our education system does not have enough resources to produce talented graduate. We don’t many private universities yet. We have only few private universities. But, they do not have qualified professors. Just making money offering poor quality foreign degrees from world low ranking universities。 I think RW is correct, but not 100%. At present, there are many Indian are working in Sri Lanka without proper license. After ECTA, they should take licenses. But, RW has to explain how ECTA prevent millions of Indian come to work in Sri Lanka. We should improve our education system and local economy first。 We will sign ECTA in 2022 or 2025. If RW wants to sign similar agreement now，he can sign with Japan， Malaysia， Middle east counties
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Hamlet / February 22, 2016
Mr Prime Minister, listen to the People while you still can.
Democracy means that you Govern for the People and the Country, not according to what you Want to, and Can do.
“No One Can Stop Us From Signing ECTA With India”
You are Right. As a Democratic Leader only YOU can stop It, for the Good of Sri Lanka and her People!
Otherwise the People will throw you out as they did the Megalomaniac Mahinda!
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ramona therese fernando / February 23, 2016
One million jobs for youth!!! That’s typical of you, Ranil, isn’t it!!! Cut-and-dried solutions that is so easy to implement- just jail and torture those who protest (like what you and your relatives did in the past). This would mean the land-bridge to TN, of course, to bring to fruition the one-million jobs. Very financially advantageous for the West, to lump as all as one generic Tamil Nation.
It’s rather like the Benghazi deal…..you know, when the US deliberately ignored the attack by Isis on its own embassy. It’s as if the US wants to whole of the ME to become the ultra-Islamic caliphate, as it will be so easy to control, and very financially rewarding for US (however bizarre and outlandish it might sound).
But 10- 50 thousand jobs via selling ourselves to India would be ok.
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ballah / February 23, 2016
what a joker this PM has become
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