Patali Champika Ranawaka, the leader of the The Republic Party, yesterday accused the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) of running higher education for millions of Sri Lankans by introducing violence and sexual violence to the government universities where the children of the innocent people of the country can get higher education for free.
He said that currently, the nature of student ragging and abuse that prevails in universities scare parents and drive students away from government universities.
Champika Ranawaka said this while addressing the Kandy District People's Meeting of the Republic Party held for the 2024 Presidential Election.
He alleges that the leftist party was against the establishment of private universities, but said that many of the children of the JVP’s politburo have gone to private universities for higher education, while children from poor demographics were left to face tear gas pushing party politics while at state universities.
“We promise that if Sajith Premadasa wins the Presidential Election held on the 21st, that multimodal transportation centre will be provided to the people of Kandy,” Ranawaka said.
“After we lost our independence to the British in 1815, we lost again after declaring our country bankrupt on 12 April 2022 and handing over the sovereignty of our country to our creditors. A case was heard in the Supreme Court. In that case, the facts of all parties were heard. The courts questioned the Auditor General of the Government, questioned the Central Bank, and Finance Ministry officials. After listening to the facts of all these people, the panel of judges including the Chief Justice gave a unanimous decision that the country was bankrupted and two hundred and twenty lakhs of our people were orphaned by Mahinda Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa,” Ranawaka said.
He questioned: “Who brought the ‘ragging’ harassment process to universities? Starting with sexual harassment called freshman harassment? The politics of Anura Dissanayake was the politics of Lal Kantha. Today, it takes five or six years to complete a three-year degree. What happened in the end, a large network of private universities emerged. Because parents could not send their children to the government university out of fear of abuse,” Ranawaka charged.