Editorial Desk :
Prime Minister of Finland Sanna Marin is now facing scrutiny over a disputed allowance she claimed to cover the cost of breakfasts at her official residence, after it was seen that value of her regular allowances was revised sharply higher.
According to Finnish daily Iltalehti, the expenditure was amounting to 850 Euros per month which was nearly three times the 300 Euros per month she gets for expenditure as the Prime Minister. The newspaper raised question whether Ms Marin was entitled to the additional allowance.
The Finish PM’s Office on Monday in a press release confirmed that from January 2020 to May 2021, the cost of Ms Marin’s use of catering services when living in an official residence was 14,363.20 Euros, or an average of 845 Euro per month. “This amount includes both breakfast items and cold-served meals,” the release said.
What’s really astounding for us is that an incumbent Prime Minister was compelled to justifying her additional expenditure to
the people after allegation of misusing public fund has been raised against her. What shocked the Finish citizens is that she spent tax-payers’ money without proper authorisation.
It’s not the end! The Finland police department has decided to conduct a probe to see if any wrongdoing had occurred. Is it possible for police departments of third world countries to launch any investigation against any incumbent Premier for such a fault?
Spending a little amount of extra Euros is a big scandal in Finish political culture. It has made Ms Marin so cornered that it may cost her the Prime Minister’s job. Such expense scandals have claimed political scalps there in the past where Finance Minister Katri Kulmuni resigned last year after questions were raised about spending public money on media training.
Have there been any way to know how much money usually our high-ups spend from the public fund? The Comptroller and Auditor General Bangladesh never raised any question over the expenses of incumbent ministers.
Even no question is raised about the expenditures of our public servants whose salaries have increased by three folds in a decade. Our general people do not know where their money goes that are paid by them as taxes VATs and foreign remittances.
When billions of dollars disappeared from Bangladesh Bank the resignation of the governor was described by the PM as a heroic act deserving credit. He faced no investigation.
Protecting public money from plundering by public officials is nobody’s business. We are a free country and joint plundering of public money by public officials is their freedom. The Finland incident to us should be a matter of big laugh.
