May Day May Day (Government Side)
May Day bikers on Horton Place.
Yesterday I wrote about the opposition JVP May Day rallies. These are some photos from marches on the other side of town, near Town Hall, led by the government and presumably paid for by you and me. They seem to bus people in (in government buses), clothe them in propaganda t-shirts and presumably feed and perhaps libate them as well. I generally enjoy the May Day floats and stuff, but I do rather dislike the use of public funds for what essentially amounts to a partisan political rally.
A highly dubious New World Order.
In the images above, you can see yellow-clad members of Wimal Weerawansa’s NFF, a break-off of the JVP. What I found noxious was the New World Order signs, and the placards reading stuff like ‘Hands Off Syria’. The faces they’re showing are generally of dictators and douchebags, who actually have very little economic or cultural connection to Sri Lankans. Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Hu Jintao, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I mean, is this really the company that Mahinda wants to keep, or the kind of leadership we desire?
That said, the JVP protestors are still wearing Lenin and Guevara t-shirts, also negative characters, but the vital difference is I didn’t pay for them. While the NFF may have their own funds, they were guarded by military, which tax-payers pretty surely are paying for. There were police securing the other rallies, but not military.
Barack Obama and Coca-Cola bad.
Wimal Weerawansa, of course, is (most recently) famous for protesting the US Geneva resolution nagging Sri Lanka by calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola and Google. So here’s Barack Obama on a Coke float.
The government buses crowds in.
There were also dudes wearing ‘Mahinda: Our Hero’ t-shirts, which I would honestly like to have. Didn’t get a photo of that. What you can see above is the sheer amount of state buses corralled into service. Hence, these aren’t really workers protests. The government is actually busing people in to make a show. Yet at the same time the cost of living for workers has gone up dramatically and people can’t afford petrol or vehicles and we’re all struggling under higher taxes. So I guess that’s why this kind of government sponsored workers protest sticks in the craw a bit. In reality, this is a government workers should be protesting against.
Posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 in Photography, Politics.
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Dude, you’ve seen only one place where buses were parked, they were in marine drive, galle face, in front of the Museum, Independence Drive, near SSC… etc. etc.
I think the count was in hundreds.
They also closed the road across the town hall the day before. Combined with the narrowing of some roads due to Vesak decorations, this caused huge traffic snarls. I was caught in it. A journey of 15 minutes took 50 minutes, by far more circuitous route.
[...] May Day, ostensibly a workers holiday, but really another day of not work. In between competing government and opposition marches, there really wasn’t a lot going on. I just sat in the lunch kade, [...]
that wimal’s new world order is funny… Why he is so hell bent on proving his extreme stupidity? OMG these are the politicians of Lanka and poeple vote for them. …
Maybe he’s stupid because people vote for him or people vote for him because he’s stupid
[...] when the whole city is devoted to lights, the assorted Royal/Thomian school marches, May Day (both government and JVP representations), oh my God, too much HTML code, I forgot where I am. There’s a lot [...]
[...] when the whole city is devoted to lights, the assorted Royal/Thomian school marches, May Day (both government and JVP representations), oh my God, too much HTML code, I forgot where I am. There’s a lot [...]