Politicians' Expenses: Is This True?

I found this email today and was wondering if this could really be true. I'd be glad if someone could verify these facts relating to the politicians in Sri Lanka.

Canada - 31 ministers for 370 million people
India - 20 ministers for 1000 million people
Russia - 25 ministers for 150 million people
Malaysia - 23 ministers for 25 million people
Bangladesh - 22 ministers for 150 million people
America - 15 ministers for 274 million people
Pakistan - 13 ministers for 130 million people
Sri Lanka - 108 ministers for 19 million people

Monthly salary of a cabinet minister ? Rs. 65,000
Monthly salary of a non cabinet minister ? Rs.63,500
The incentive for participating for a parliamentary session ? Rs.500
The incentive for participating for a select committee? Rs.200
Monthly fuel incentive for a cabinet and a non cabinet minister ? Rs. 75,000
Monthly fuel incentive deputy minister - Rs.50,000
Monthly incentive for the personal telephone ? Rs.20,000
Monthly mobile incentive ? Rs. 10,000

The facility is provided to take an unlimited amount of IDD and local calls from the official telephone for a month.

Every minister has a right to employ 4 secretaries as media, personal,
coordinating, and public relations. Vehicles, fuel incentives, telephone
incentives and limited entertainment incentives are provided for all of
them from the ministry.

For the 18 cabinet and non cabinet ministers, the monthly expense for fuel
From the government is Rs:1,350,000. Also for the 10 new deputy ministers,
Rs:500,000 should be separated. The total monthly fuel expense for them is
Rs:1,850,000.

How To Measure Sri Lankan Stupidity

They say that we are among the best in terms of literacy. They say we are at the very top in the Asian countries. How often do we see people rave about this fact to say that we are one of the most intelligent nations in the world? ….but are we really?

I used to say I’m proud about been Sri Lankan. Most people would still say so. I’m proud about the country of course, its history, its scenic beauty and every other lifeless subject I come across, but not about the people. There’s nothing to be proud about the people of our country. In fact, collectively, we are one of the stupidest nations in the world. Evidence is everywhere you see.

The people of this country have been the victims of cunning manipulation from two prominent groups over the years - the politicians and the private media. They know extremely well how stupid we are. As for the politics, the politicians know that we are dumb and that the people of this country are easily malleable. But on stage, they say that the voters in this country are extremely intelligent. The survival of a political party like the JVP for more than 15 years is itself evidence enough to how stupid we are as a nation.

In all my recent years with a discernible opinion of how the world operates no other word has detested me more than the word “politics”. No matter how hard you try to run away from that cursed word, it will always catch up with you in the end. You go to the grocer: politics. You turn on the TV: politics. You glance at the daily newspaper: filled with politics.

How badly dependant are we on this word itself? Most of you would say, ‘politics is in everything we do: we can’t escape it: Our lives are influenced by the very actions of those who “represent” us in the parliament’. Is it really?

I used to blog about politics. One of the stupidest decisions of my life. Though I was not an astute political analyzer, the idea of putting my two cents on the things I thought that mattered to the people seemed appealing at first. But only for a short time. A waste of time and a waste of words.

Our disposition to politics as a nation seems unparalleled. An abundance of examples will follow you wherever you go. The office trains are roaring with laudatory analysis of the yesterday’s parliament session. The lunch hours occupied with debates to justify the sudden change of political parties of a major politician. Organizers thanking the president according to the hierarchy in a speech in an opening of a public place of which the president had no idea about.

This is the lie we live in. They say politicians are jokers. What does that make us?

I say we stop. We stop depending on politics for everything in our lives.

Wanni made an e-village. Hell, I’m impressed. That’s the kind of people we want and that’s the kind of work we should all be trying to do. Make a difference in the small world you live in. That’s my idea of living and ‘May my graduation guide me there and show me the way to make my contribution matter the most’.

Then there is the media.

I was accidentally watching a chart show named “Diganthaya” in sirasa tv this morning and I was amazed to see how many people subscribed to the “love calculator” feature through sms during that hour. It is as stupid as it can get. You type in your name and your lovers name or the person you want your lover to be and send it to sirasa which costs you Rs.5/= per sms. I was amazed to see how people turned out in large numbers to make sirasa even richer. Yet another trick by sirasa to exploit the stupidity of our people. They distribute gold coins during “Ran Depeya”. They sneak in at night and distribute gas cookers. Oh… they are the best. It’ll take another millennium for the Sri Lankans to see the irreparable damage caused by sirasa.

I find that there are two measures we can use to measure the stupidity of our people. The number of people who say that sirasa is the best tv channel in Sri Lanka and the number of people who vote JVP in an election. You are free to come up with your own yardsticks.