The Hon. (Dr.) Ramanathan Archchuna
Hon. (Dr.) Ramanathan Archchuna raised a point under Standing Order No. 91(6), arguing that speaking time is not being allocated fairly because Members listed later often receive less time when earlier speakers exceed their limits. He proposed introducing a visible timing system, similar to the European Parliament, where speaking time is displayed and microphones are cut off when time expires, to ensure equitable participation.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Sir, Standing Order No. 91(6). I will read it:
¶ 02 “Notwithstanding the provisions of this Standing Order, the Speaker shall be responsible for allocating time among Members in a fair and equitable manner.”
¶ 03 Hon. Deputy Speaker, we are often placed at the end of the list. Even if seven minutes are allotted, by the end we get only three or two minutes, while those at the top exceed their ten. I visited the European Parliament: a screen displays the time; after three minutes, the microphone switches off. Can we not show speaking time on a screen here? Otherwise, those at the end get no fair time.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Monday, 10 November 2025 ·No. 22753 ·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/20555
Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Ramanathan Archchuna. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 10 November 2025. No. 22753. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/20555