Rasamanickam: IMF agreement waste of time and money as it is already signed

By Saman Indrajith

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP Shanakiyan Rasamanickam yesterday told Parliament that the debate on the country’s agreement with the IMF was a waste of time as the two parties had already signed the agreement.

“This is a waste of time. We are talking about this for three days and we are spending about 30 million rupees of public funds a day to hold parliamentary sessions,” he said.

The TNA MP said that the debate would have made sense only if the inputs of the MPs contributed to the contents of the agreement.

“An MP makes no difference by voting for or against the agreement. The government has already agreed to the terms of the agreement and are implementing the IMF proposals. The TNA will not vote because this is a farce,” he said.

Rasamanickam said that a large number of government MPs had no idea what the contents of the agreement were.

“Sri Lanka is in this mess because those in power did not listen to local experts. The government has promised to address some governance issues to the IMF, from addressing corruption to the independence of the Central Bank. We have hardly met the promised governance issues. The government is fully implementing the promises made on tax reforms. The people are suffering,” he said.