The Hon. (Dr.) Najith Indika

¶ 01 Thank you, Madam Deputy Chairperson of Committees. While many of our speakers, including the State Minister of Finance, addressed the Order under the Stamp Duty (Special Provisions) Act, I wish to comment on an issue repeatedly raised by the Opposition over the last few days—the formation of administrations in local authorities.

¶ 02 The Opposition says the NPP is not as before; it is forming councils by joining with others, as if that is some crime. Let us go to the root. The local government elections were held on 06 May 2025. Out of 339 bodies, the NPP won 266. The SJB won 138; the UNP, none; the SLPP, none. Under the law, we could directly form administrations in 151 bodies; in the remaining 115, though we had won, we fell short by one, two, or three seats.

¶ 03 What is the essence of representative democracy? Those who win should run the councils, not those who lost and polled 10–15 percent. What did the Opposition do? The UNP, SJB, and SLPP sat together publicly to form unprincipled coalitions to block chairmanship votes. On Colombo MC, with 119 seats, SJB had only 29, yet sought to appoint the Mayor. They tried to pervert the electoral outcome. “The Opposition” as a single entity did not contest; individual parties did. The losers cannot gang up after the fact to run councils against the winners.

¶ 04 Yes, laws have words and also gaps. But we will not allow fundamental democratic principles to be violated via loopholes. If you convene press conferences and we see who sits there, we know where it is heading. Now you accuse us of taking an individual member’s support to form a majority. Meanwhile, SJB and SLPP openly sit together plotting to defeat us. In three consecutive elections—presidential, parliamentary, and local—you attacked the Rajapaksas; now you sit with them. We, however, have no such deals. We form councils with members of those councils. That may vary by place, but we establish bodies we have won.

¶ 05 In Kuliyapitiya PS, we won 21 seats; yet the chairman became a SLPP member who had 6 seats. In Udubaddawa PS, we won 9; SLPP still got the chair. This distorts results. You cannot simply add 10%, 15% together to claim over 50% ex post. That’s anti-democratic.

¶ 06 People defeated you for reasons. They elected us to run the councils we won. We cannot conjure seats; we must seek support from sitting members. We have not made party deals; we reached understandings with individual members to form the bodies we won.

¶ 07 You accuse us of playing games; yet for decades you jumped sides for ministries, used politics for personal enrichment, and presided over corruption, including fake medicines. We are not such people. Those who work for a public purpose will go farther than those who act for personal gain. We won; we will establish power in the bodies we won. Do not think we will sit idle while you cobble together 10, 13, 14 percent to claim a majority.

¶ 08 We deal with individual members, not party-level backroom deals. Before accusing us, reflect on your own parties abandoning their policies to form ad hoc coalitions.

¶ 09 Thank you.