At least Ned Kelly was a scoundrel who helped the poor

– our highway robbers are Members of Parliament – they are not in jail or under indictment! Why?

The infamous outlaw of 19^thC Australia, Ned Kelly and his Gang of highway robbers was a champion of the poor and a folklore celebrity, much like Saradial of Utumankande in the hills on the way to Kandy, due to his sharing of the spoils.

Today’s breed of outlaws do their deeds by proxy. They use their cronies to collect kappang (protection money) from all manner of transport that cross their area, much like highway robbers of the past. So all lorries that ply from Mahiyangana and Manampitiya with Mahaweli Sand, despite paying off local pols for permits and mining rights are asked for money when they pass the jurisdiction of local MPs. Then worse, the buses that ply almost all routes have to pay small amounts of protection money, to local warlords, all with various tags of elected representatives, even in the heart of Colombo. Ask a local bus owner how much has to be parted on each journey and when one multiplies this over all the buses and routes just in Colombo, it amounts to over Rs10M a day.

These costs in the end are borne by the hapless consumer, commuter who gets landed for all these add-ons, unknowingly of course, but indirectly by his foolishness in helping to elect the rascal he has given his vote for.

So it comes as no surprise when one rogue MP used his goons to beat up and break the hands of another rogue MP, both of whom are guilty of running protection rackets. The Case in point was a Badulla District MP, peeved that a Matale District MP was taking money when the sand lorries of the followers of the former were passing through the area of the latter, had assaulted and broken the MPs hand!

These two bit goons, make a pretense of being very honorable, one writing frequently to the papers extolling the virtues of this and that, whilst actually being nothing more or less than a common criminal. Worse, they are both UPFA MP’s in Parliament, confirming what is already known that behind any scheme of extortion is a sitting MP receiving protection because they claim some commonality with the ruling cabal.

Due to press censorship and threats to media, we only hear about isolated incident, when there is some publicity of an MP being hospitalized due to a fracas, but it is a daily event, with numerous two bit players engaging in turf wars and old fashioned gang warfare in a seemingly crime free country that has replaced terrorism with an even worse form of authorized daily community crime spree, under the radar.

Open tomorrows Newspaper to read the next installment, just be sure to read between the lines, as the Press Censorship forbids the naming and shaming of Celebs!