The Hon. Dilith Jayaweera
Hon. Dilith Jayaweera criticized the Government’s proposed education reforms, arguing that they are unilateral, lack a regulatory framework, and undermine the principles of free education. He questioned whether Government members were being led toward authoritarian practices and urged them to oppose the reforms. He called on members to join a protest in Matugama at the statue of C.W.W. Kannangara to defend free education.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 I earnestly request Government benches to reflect: are you, perhaps unknowingly, being driven by dark forces toward an authoritarian regime? Did you ever imagine you would be justifying these sudden, unilateral education “reforms”—contrary to free education—and normalizing them here? Those of us who once chanted “Milk to Colombo; cucumber to the village” in university marches—did we think an Education Minister, lacking even a basic grasp of free education, would bring such ad hoc programs without a regulatory framework, and that you would be compelled to justify them?
¶ 02 Did you imagine those who oppressed our youth in darker times would now control you from behind? I appeal to your conscience: join us tomorrow in Matugama at the statue of our free-education hero Kannangara to safeguard free education from this rapid dismantling.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 9 January 2026 ·No. 23149 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/1768
Cite as: The Hon. Dilith Jayaweera. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 January 2026. No. 23149. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/1768