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By Sandun Jayawardana 

The apparent reluctance by the main opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) to submit its much hyped No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya opened the party up to attack by a government that spent much of this week daring the opposition to present their motion to the House. 

The SJB-led opposition had started collecting signatures for the NCM against Dr Amarasuriya in her capacity as Minister of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education, several weeks ago, accusing her of mishandling the introduction of the National People’s Power (NPP) government’s controversial education reforms. The NCM though, is yet to be submitted and there have already been signs that it may not have the support of all the opposition parties in parliament.

The government, which has been on the back foot in recent weeks due to the controversy surrounding the education reforms, seized on the SJB’s failure to submit the NCM. Chief Government Whip Nalinda Jayatissa told parliament on Tuesday (20) that the government was even prepared to amend the House’s agenda during the week to accommodate a debate on the NCM against the PM on Thursday and Friday. “This will enable the government to provide clear answers regarding these education reforms,” Dr Jayatissa said. “If the opposition is not prepared to debate its NCM on these two days, and if they are unwilling to submit their motion, the government requests that it be given the opportunity to move an adjournment debate on the education reforms on Thursday. We are prepared to debate the issue the entire day,” the Chief Government Whip insisted. He pointed out that the debate on the Universities (Amendment) Bill was also scheduled to be taken up on Friday and observed that this would enable the government to have a proper debate on the education reforms on both these days.

There is a procedure to presenting an NCM and this is clearly explained in the Constitution, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said in response. “It is not the government that decides on the NCM. We are not prepared to submit an NCM according to the wishes of the government. We will present our motion at the right time,” he added. Mr Premadasa however, told the government that the opposition was prepared to hold not just a two-day but even a three-day debate on education reforms immediately if the government agreed.

The government did move an adjournment motion on “Educational Reforms” on Thursday (22), where NPP MPs strongly defended the education reforms. At the first opportunity that the education reforms came to be discussed, the opposition mounted a campaign to deceive the public into believing that the reforms “would spell the end of education itself,” Trade Minister Wasantha Samarasinghe told the House. “When that didn’t work, they tried to link it to religion. Not only that. They also attempted to distort the cultural, physical and even biological differences among people to convey a distorted picture of these reforms. There were some in the opposition who even resorted to claiming that the rainbow colours in one of the modules represented the pride flag.”

The NPP laid the groundwork for these education reforms as far back as 2018, by holding wide-ranging discussions within its movement, Leader of the House Bimal Rathnayake said. The NPP’s education policy was presented to the country when Anura Kumara Dissanayake contested for the presidency, he also pointed out. “Education was among 10 separate policies we presented to the people at that time because we know that we cannot approve these policies even within our movement without a broad discussion,” said Mr Rathnayake. He characterized the education reforms as an extension of the “struggle” waged by the NPP. “As such, we have no struggle with our conscience regarding these reforms. They are very close to what we had thought, but we all know that we can’t do everything we think we can do,” the minister said.

SJB Matale District MP Rohini Kumari Wijerathna hit back at the government’s claims that the opposition was obstructing the new education reforms. “It is important for us to have conversations regarding these reforms, but the conversations must happen not only among those in political authority. When you are bringing these education reforms, experts in these fields must discuss and debate them so that they can take the best content. This is very important because children deserve the best.”

Whatever the government may say now, the opposition repeatedly said in every committee it attended regarding these reforms that it was ready to support education reforms as long as there was transparency, Ms Wijerathna said. If the government had been transparent over the past year with regard to these reforms, the government may not have been forced to walk back these reforms now, she added.

Addressing Parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, who had only arrived in the country earlier that day from Davos, Switzerland after attending the World Economic Forum, said she had come to Parliament with the expectation of facing the NCM against her. The PM urged the opposition to make a deep study of the government’s education reforms without simply reading the table of contents and forming an impression of the reforms based on these alone. She urged the opposition to provide constructive criticism after making such a study of the reforms.

She said the new education reforms included targets to ensure “lifelong learning” and “learning to learn,” which are core principles in global education policies. The new education reforms provide the flexibility to ensure these objectives can be achieved, the PM added.