Effigies will be beaten and burnt but he stands for the farmers kidneys!

Perhaps no politician in the country has been subjected to as much hatred in recent times as Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage. He has been the face of the Government’s controversial ban on chemical fertiliser that has left farmers fuming.

His repeated claims that there is actually no fertiliser shortage in the country, and that there is no need to import a grain of rice, has only angered them even more, given that the situation on the ground is vastly different from what the minister claims before the media and in Parliament.

There have been dozens of protests over the past two weeks over the Government’s continued ban on the chemical fertiliser as well as its inability to even issue the 'organic fertiliser' it wants farmers to use as the transition to organic farming. No farmer protest it seems is complete these days without an effigy of the Agriculture Minister. At most protests, the effigy is severely beaten or set alight. Sometimes, protesters do both.

Minister Aluthgamage alluded to the anger felt against him when he met representatives of the Sri Lanka National Farmers’ Organisation Board on Thursday. He however, continued to remain defiant. “I have gone down in history as the country’s most vilified Agriculture Minister. But no matter how many effigies of mine are beaten or burned, I remain committed to this policy because my aim is to protect the farmers’ kidneys,” he says.