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By Sandun Jayawardana  

The opposition of course, did not fail to miss the opportunity to remind the government of how it was now defending the Yahapalana policies during the three-day debate on President Wickremesinghe’s policy statement.

Opening the debate on Tuesday (9), Chief Opposition Whip and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP Lakshman Kiriella said the President’s policy statement left him astonished since it completely reversed everything that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had done over the past three years. He pointed out that the President has agreed to bring back the 19th Amendment and reestablish Parliament’s sectoral oversight committees. The SLPP had also refused to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but the government is now working to reach an agreement with it.  

“The President is implementing the programme we have been fighting for the past three years. We are proud of that,” Mr Kiriella quipped.

While the SJB won’t oppose the government’s programme, if the President wants the opposition to support his all-party government, he must first set a timeframe of between six months to a year for that administration, which would then be followed by an election, the MP stressed. “If he’s planning to keep this interim administration running till 2025, it will not succeed.”

The President’s policy statement was an acknowledgement that much has changed since the last presidential election in November 2019 and that the government must respond to it, Leader of the House, Minister Susil Premajayantha stated.

Mr Premajayantha also hit back on allegations that the State of Emergency was being used to stifle dissent. While there are certain limitations on freedoms put in place by the Public Security Ordinance, it does not mean the right to expression or freedom of assembly has been prohibited. “There is no bar on a peaceful struggle. There were assemblies even today,” he said/

“We are committed to achieving the reforms needed to secure a programme from the IMF. The President as well as the government is committed. All of us must work together. That is the principle on which we can come out of this serious national crisis,” Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena insisted.

Mr Gunawardena, added that the sectoral oversight committees that the government hopes to establish will involve all 225MPs in the legislature in governance and reduce the gap between the President, Cabinet, Parliament and the people.  

The Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) had expected more efforts towards forming an all-party government in line with the proposals presented by the party, SLFP Leader and former President Maithripala Sirisena said. “We deeply regret that there has not yet been much progress in establishing such an all-party programme. We appeal to the government to immediately begin work on establishing this programme based on our proposals.”

Mr. Sirisena criticised former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s handling of international relations, stating that the country lost the support of many countries due to his government’s reckless policies.

“Though the former President requested the Tamil diaspora to invest in the country, he neither invested a cent in the Jaffna peninsula nor even visited Jaffna during his presidency. He also created issues with Muslim countries due to the ban on burial of bodies of victims of COVID-19 despite the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) insistence that it was safe. We also lost the support of Qatar by banning the fund established by that state to assist our children.”

He urged the current government not to repeat the same mistakes, citing the controversy surrounding the Chinese vessel Yuan Wang 5.

The President’s success so far should be measured by his actions, SLPP MP Dullas Alahapperuma told Parliament. “The President is no magician. I am not the type of person to demand that he resolve the decades-long problems faced by our country in a few weeks or months. But this period is more than enough for him to present his programme to resolve this crisis. Regrettably, what we are seeing is the using of this crisis to resolve the problems faced by the President’s party, his friends and those who elected him to power,” he added.

SJB MP Dr Harsha De Silva said that though he is in the opposition, he is in agreement with the economic principles presented by the President. “They are the same principles that we had in the government that came to power in 2015. We couldn’t implement them due to opposition from those in the government now. They didn’t let us join with the outside world and insisted we put up walls around the country,” he charged.

He noted that the government had no popular mandate and it was still being haunted by the “Ghosts of the Rajapaksas.”

“We haven’t even touched restructuring our debt. The President says we will need the emergency to enact economic reforms. Does that mean that if the people of this country do not accept these reforms, the President is going to utilise the emergency to enforce them? I don’t believe you can enact economic reforms through fear,” he remarked.

Dr De Silva said the SJB had already presented a plan to take Sri Lanka out of the crisis but the government was yet to present its own plan. “This path that the government is trying to undertake now is also wrong. They are trying to move forward with a team of their own under a banner of an all-party government. If we go down that path we will be back here in six months making the same speeches because we will not be able to get local and international support,” he warned.

The opposition did not join an all-party government proposed by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa saying they could not work with him. There is no reason for them not to work with President Wickremesinghe now since he is their former leader, argued Chief Government Whip and Minister Prasanna Ranatunga.

“Let’s rebuild the country first and restore the economy. We can go for an election thereafter. It is a joke to say that we should go for an election in six months considering the prevailing economic crisis,” he further insisted.

“You cannot rebuild the country when the same people who are responsible for its collapse are still in charge,” noted National People’s Power (NPP) Leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

“They are inviting parties not for an all-party government but to become stakeholders in a Ranil-Rajapaksa government. We aren’t prepared to do that. But we are prepared to respond positively if the government presents a positive programme aimed at resolving this crisis.”

Mr Dissanayake said the best solution would be to go for an election to obtain a fresh mandate from the people.

Parliament will reconvene on August 29.