The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa
Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa argued that freedom of expression does not extend to making false claims, referring to recent statements that he said may lead to complaints by affected relatives. He challenged those alleging wrongdoing by the Secretary to the Treasury to prove that he held foreign or dual citizenship while serving as Secretary, Deputy Minister, or MP, and accused critics of making claims and then withdrawing or qualifying them.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Wait a bit. Freedom of expression is not freedom to lie. Today is the sermon, tomorrow the almsgiving. After that, the relatives will complain against those who made these statements.
¶ 02 Also, there is now an attack targeted at the Secretary to the Treasury. I say: prove—if you can—that he was a foreign or dual citizen while holding the office of Secretary, Deputy Minister, or MP. Prove it. Now he says nothing. Hon. Sujeewa Senasinghe now says he is not saying that. That is what they always do—say things and then backtrack—asking us to prove a negative.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 5 May 2026 ·No. 23546 ·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.
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/lk/speeches/20005
Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 5 May 2026. No. 23546. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/20005