-By Investigative Journalist
(Lanka-e-News -22.Feb.2025, 11.00 PM) Every year, Sri Lanka’s New Year celebrations bring joy, laughter, and… corruption? That’s right, folks! This year, the Smart Youth Avurudu Festival was not just about coconut scraping and pillow fights—it was also about some truly world-class financial gymnastics.
A grand project, a noble initiative, a festival so smart that it managed to make billions of rupees vanish into thin air, leaving behind only T-shirts, some questionable stage lights, and a whole lot of unanswered questions. The mastermind? None other than President Ranil, with the help of the ever-obedient National Youth Services Council (NYSC).
Step 1: Find a Big Budget with Little Oversight
Luckily, the government had already set aside a cool Rs. 1,000 million for youth development. Now, that’s a lot of money for workshops, training, and skill-building, right? Wrong. That’s a lot of money for… well, nobody really knows, because the expenditure accounts were conveniently left blank.
Step 2: Invent a Festival That Sounds Inspirational
The "Smart Youth Avurudu Festival" had everything: sports events, music programs, and entertainment for the masses. And most importantly, it had a budget that could be creatively managed.
Step 3: Spend Public Money Like You Won the Lottery
Two million rupees for newspaper ads? Sure. Printing T-shirts for participants? Of course. Stages, lighting, and live broadcasting? Absolutely! After all, why should campaign funds come from private donors when taxpayer money is just sitting there, waiting to be spent?
Step 4: Get a Presidential Secretary to Approve Everything
Enter former Presidential Secretary Saman, the man with the golden pen. Every expense was neatly authorized, making sure all transactions looked perfectly legal—until COPE (the Committee on Public Enterprises) decided to start asking questions.
Step 5: Fill the Project Board with Unqualified Friends
If you’re going to pull off a financial magic trick, you don’t want pesky professionals asking too many questions. So, the project board was filled with people whose qualifications were, at best, "enthusiasm" and, at worst, "blind loyalty." Education? Expertise? Who needs those when you have unwavering support for the President?
Unfortunately for the masterminds, COPE members have been asking why Rs. 4.3 million was spent on a music program that never saw the light of day. "The video was handed over," claimed the former Chairman of NYSC. "To whom?" asked COPE. Silence.
COPE members also raised concerns that the festival was simply a rebranded version of previous election campaign events. The former Chairman, of course, denied everything. "We followed Election Commission directives," he claimed, while simultaneously trying to explain how a taxpayer-funded event just happened to benefit the President’s campaign.
Other suspicious expenditures included the National Youth Poson Zone and various "youth programs" in Jaffna and Ampara—many of which had financial records as clear as a Colombo traffic jam.
And let’s not forget the Minister of Youth Affairs, who treated public funds like his personal inheritance. If anyone thought Sri Lanka was in an economic crisis, they clearly hadn’t seen the spending habits of this ministry.
One question remains unanswered: Where did the missing billions go? Into campaign efforts? Private accounts? A secret underground vault? The public might never know, but one thing is certain—Smart Youth Avurudu Festival was, indeed, smart. Just not for the youth.
Calls for a full-scale criminal investigation have been made, with some even demanding a commission to probe into this grand-scale festival-turned-campaign-funding operation. Meanwhile, the people behind it remain suspiciously silent.
So, dear readers, the next time you hear about a grand government festival, don’t just look at the bright lights and dancing youth—follow the money. You might just find that your tax rupees are doing the cha-cha straight into someone else’s pocket.
-By Investigative Journalist
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by (2025-02-22 18:09:10)
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