The Hon. K.V. Samantha Viddyarathna - Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, most of today’s time has been on the Sri Lanka Electricity (Amendment) Bill, alongside measures of the Finance Ministry and my Ministry.

¶ 02 As the last Government-side speaker in this debate, I must clarify: listening to the Opposition, we heard wailing, suspicions, contradictions. When the law operates, they speak of a child’s issue here, a wife’s issue there — their hearts race and words tumble. Over 76 years, their incapacity is laid bare while our Government moves with progressive proposals they cannot bear to accept. If your 76 years of governance had succeeded, our team would never have come to power. It is your failure that created the path for us.

¶ 03 On the Electricity Bill: the Opposition claims they produced megawatts. If in the last 76 years they had properly produced power, this country should have had 70–80,000 GWh of generation; money was certainly spent. But production remained weak. If they could not ensure 24-hour supply, if outages were frequent, if affordable tariffs were not possible, they must take responsibility. To change that, deep structural reforms are needed — which we are now doing. The results may not be visible immediately to some who lack foresight.

¶ 04 We cannot grow the economy or social welfare under the old rules you made. So we have designed a modern law addressing generation, transmission, distribution and operations.

¶ 05 Compare how you behaved in Opposition to how we did. We opposed development only when it was harmful to the country. For example, we opposed the Uma Oya project — and we led that opposition because it was a Rajapaksa trap. We went to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the then Government admitted to the Court that 13,500 houses cracked and exploded; paid compensation; 7,500 wells dried; 15,000 acres of farmland were filled and ruined. That was a disaster. We were not against development; we were against harm to the people — created by your side. Foundations were laid without environmental studies, and the study came one and a half years later to suit the work. That is why disaster resulted. So when we opposed, there were reasons. Now, you oppose because our Government is correctly enacting laws and carrying out development.