The Hon. Chamara Sampath Dasanayake

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, thank you for the opportunity during the Vote on Account debate. Historically, this is the 14th Vote on Account. The first under a State Council was in 1931. The SLFP Government of 1960 also brought a Vote on Account after the Press Bill defeat amid two elections; that history shows context.

¶ 02 Under the Constitution, Articles 150(2) and (3), the President can bring a Vote on Account at any time. The 2024 State Finance Management Act (No. 44 of 2024), Section 23, also provides for it. However, instead of a VoA, the Government could have presented an Appropriation Bill and passed it in about 10 days working day and night. Nonetheless, the Government chose a VoA; there should be no division over it.

¶ 03 But let me highlight an issue. It is said we simply cut and pasted the previous President’s Head of Expenditure into three four‑month blocks with a 10 percent add-on, without any reform. The Ministry of Finance asked the Presidential Secretariat whether changes were to be made; none were made. Officials have misled governments for 70 years by repeating the same templates.

¶ 04 Under President Anura Kumara, 13 divisions under the previous President’s Secretariat have been removed—such as the World Food Programme unit, the “Urumaya” programme, and the division handling issues of overseas Sri Lankans—yet the expenditure head seems unchanged relative to when those divisions existed. This needs correction. Do not let officials mislead you.

¶ 05 As a former Provincial Finance Minister, I have seen year‑end warrant practices and idle fixed deposits sitting in provincial accounts while the centre borrows. We must end such anomalies. I will pose further questions on Washington travel and IMF discussions in due course. Do not allow repeats of past mistakes; scrutinize and reform the estimates rather than copy-forward.

¶ 06 We must also reflect on Members’ housing conditions at Madiwela—see the state of those quarters; we too suffered similarly before. Learn from this and fix systems. Ultimately, it is entrenched bureaucratic habits that can also bring down governments if left unchecked.