This has reference to the news item captioned "At the taxpayers' expense" carrying a picture of a Christmas/New Year card sent by Minister Nimal Siripala Silva and Mr. Tissa Devendra's letter captioned "goodwill on the cheap" in The Island of 03/01.

This practice of sending officially printed greeting cards by politicians started several years ago. TD's letter suggests that even govt. servants have now contracted the infection from their political masters. Anybody is free to send greeting cards on special occasions to their friends and relations, but it is entirely a private matter and therefore it is absolutely wrong to use govt. funds for the purpose. That amounts to abuse of authority and squandering public funds for private purposes. These cards are elaborate and are printed on high quality paper and are very costly.

Even govt. corporations that are in the red and state banks print calendars and diaries at enormous cost and who getS them but politicians, senior govt. servants and the friends of the higher ups and never the clients.

The Speaker gave a grand dinner to 3500 invitees on Christmas day. What purpose did it serve except boost his personal image at govt. expense. This will be repeated in April for the Sinhala and Hindu New Year wasting more public funds and how will he justify that?

Sri Lanka depends on foreign assistance for development and none other than the president himself leads delegations to various countries to canvass support, the general public are all the time asked to make sacrifices in the hope a imaginary distant dawn, at least one third of the people live below poverty line without one square meal a day, but politicians who are maintained at enormous cost to the state, shamelessly squander public funds.

We expected that at least President Rajapaksa would call a halt to these practices but that is not to be. May be frugality on the part of the govt. and the politicians is not part of Mahinda Chintanaya.