you force them to get the governmentjob, they organise themselves. applause. ..they organise themselves an unemployed graduate union, they want to fix the public sector, public sector is bloated. so these are challenges, but this is not a time to point fingers at each other. all of us have to be blamed on this. because 1971, the price in 1988 90 uprising, all have contributed to this. nobody is free, none of them are. they are trying to say that they re a paragon of virtue. no, that s not the case! they are also responsible, my party is also responsible, all the parties are responsible for what we have today, 75 years. it is the moment of truth. we all must be honest to admit that and deal with it. applause. harini. i think that s a really callous response to the situation i that we are in right now. people are not getting - on the streets because they choose to get on the streets. they re getting on the streets because there are actual - problems. i think it s a very glib answer to s
sector needs to be strengthened strengthened doesn t mean expansion . or bloating, and if you look at why. the public sector has been bloated |and if you look at in which sectors| it s been bloated, it s in areas, in resources where it s peoplel who are really unproductive, who ve been chucked - into the public sector. there are lots of vacancies in areas that actually need to be filled. - i ve got to bring dushni, you ve got to break up this bilateral at the side here. dushni, your response? i mean, ithink sri lanka has a public sector that s far too large. there is no dispute about that. the reason why it s grown in size is also political because each government that comes in has they come under pressure to absorb more and more people into the public sector. some of it is unemployed graduates, but a larger chunk of it is also politicians providing employment to their supporters through the institutions that they control. applause. thank you. now, yes, so that s the problem. we
i m so sorry, ali sabry, minister, but they like what harini is saying and you didn t get any applause for that answer. but, anyway, let s see what dushni has to say. dushni, your response to the question about corruption. i tend to agree with what the minister said to the extent that corruption is one of the sort of, you know, manifestations of the broader issue of loss of accountability and weakening of institutions that we ve had, and i think we need to we can have certain structures and places in place, but i think one of the biggest areas or reforms that people are demanding is actually in the political leadership, because corruption has not sprung on us overnight, and the economic crisis did not spring up overnight either. this has been successive governments over the last few decades where we have persistently seen institutions being weakening.
indeterminately, there has to be some resolution for this, - and also, what i see is that this is not just an economic crisis. this is a political crisis. i when people got on the streets last i year, people were demanding a change in the political culture. they were demanding a change in the political system. - well, they saw off the president, didn t they? imean, rajapaksa. yes, that s part one. ..went to singapore and resigned by e mailfrom there. laughs that s part one. they got rid of someone they didn t like. - but have we replaced the person e didn t like with a person that we have chosen? we haven t. dushni weerakoon, your response to that question? well, i think sri lanka is i mean, we are through the worst of the crisis, but i think that we are certainly not out of the woods yet. if the economic downturn is prolonged and recessionary conditions drag on, there is a sense that people s lives are not improving, their livelihoods and their basic sort of living
are gone, yes, 312,000, but even in 2014, 304,000 people left, they will go for a better standard. so what the alternative is is to provide an opportunity here in sri lanka so that we can retain them and there is opportunity for them. but even in india, in the early 805, people started to go. now they have come back and they have started coming back. i m hopeful, if we all work together without this partisan approach, we can rebuild our country. foreign minister ali sabry, harini amarasuriya, opposition mp, and economist dushni weerakoon, thank you very much indeed. that s all from this edition of global questions on whether sri lanka is managing to put a lid on the political discontent, which was triggered by that economic crisis. and i hope we ve also discussed some of the lessons learned for other countries beset by similar problems. remember we are the programme that brings you the trend lines behind the headlines. from me, zeinab badawi, from here in colombo, thank you to you,