[The Admiral]
Fuel prices are going up. Again. The government is waiting for the right moment to announce it, which means they are waiting for people to forget the last increase before hitting them with the next one.
Four months. Four months of increase after increase landing on ordinary people like rain that never stops. Electricity up. Fuel up. Cost of living up. Salaries staying exactly where they were. The mathematics of this government is remarkably consistent. Everything goes up except the things that should go up.
Here is the question nobody in power wants to answer. Global oil prices go up and down, which is normal and understandable and nobody disputes that reality. When global prices rise, Sri Lankans should pay more at the pump. Fair enough. Painful but fair.
The real scandal is different. The real question is why Ceylon Petroleum Corporation runs like a luxury hotel for incompetent officials funded entirely by the wallets of ordinary citizens. CPC carries losses the way some people carry extra weight, comfortably and without any intention of changing. Corruption lives inside CPC like a permanent resident who never pays rent. Mismanagement runs the daily operations like a senior manager who cannot be fired.
Every time the government announces an energy price increase, the explanation is exactly the same three words. Costs have increased. That is all. No details. No breakdown. No explanation of how much is global oil prices and how much is CPC’s own spectacular incompetence and corruption. People are simply expected to pay and be quiet and grateful they were informed at all.
The citizen becomes the relief fund for every bad decision, every corrupt deal, every mismanaged contract, every inflated salary, every unnecessary position filled with someone’s cousin at an institution that should exist to serve the nation and instead exists to drain it.
This government promised to clean corruption and deliver accountability. Four months of relentless price increases later, CPC still bleeds, officials still thrive, and citizens still pay for sins they never committed.
Wake up. Paying for global oil prices is the citizen’s reality. Paying for corruption and incompetence dressed as price increases is a different crime entirely.