Salary increase statement hilarious - Mowlana

UNP remanded working class for their demands:

Sarath Fonseka telling UNP Trade Union Activists at Sirikotha that he would increase the public servants’ salaries by Rs. 10,000 is hilarious, said SLFP Senior Vice President and Joint Council of Trade Unions Organisation Alavi Mowlana.

“We only feel sorry for his ignorance since it was the UNP that sacked 83,000 workers with one stroke of the pen when they asked for only a Rs 10 increment,” Mowlana said in a release yesterday.

Mowlana also recalled that the workers had to face a barrage of attacks by UNP goondas when they took to the street agitating this salary increment on behalf of the working class.

He said he along with Trade Union leaders were beaten up by cycle chains and were hospitalized for months.

Mowlana added: “I feel sorry for Sarath Fonseka for he has still not learnt the UNP suppressions of the working class in the past.

Not even in the wildest dream that the working class would believe a “nobodys” presidential candidate for his childish talk before the trade unionists of the UNP.

The UNP has a notorious past in clamping down Emergency laws and imposing curfews, whenever the working class rose up to get their legitimate rights and increments of salary. The working class were sent to remand when they forwarded their demand. After the July 80 strike, 36 workers who lost their jobs, committed suicide. Is Fonseka going to compensate their helpless families now?

Fonseka sounds like a parrot, which rattles off anything its master would teach the bird.

No doubt the working class would teach him a lesson at the Presidential poll, when they would overwhelmingly vote for President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Where was Sarath Fonseka when J.R. Jayewardene promised voters Eta Ata (eight pounds of grains) which promise he shamelessly threw away to the wind after becoming the President.

Between 1977 to 1994 your present boss operating behind the scene refused to even grant an interview to the Trade Union to place before him their legitimate demands. It looks that Fonseka is only a shadow boxer”.