The Hon. Sunil Rathnasiri

¶ 01 [3.59 p.m.]

¶ 02 Hon. Presiding Member, today the Leader of the Opposition questioned statistics cited by the President, implying flaws. Our data come from credible sources—UNICEF, World Bank, the Central Bank, and the Department of Census and Statistics. The Opposition Leader once boasted he could go house to house at night to gauge people’s lives; perhaps that’s where he gets his data. We do not have time for such theatrics; we govern.

¶ 03 Hon. Rohitha Abeygunawardena lectured us on governance while lamenting how they lost power. We welcome learning good practices from senior MPs, but he should also teach how they bankrupted a once‑rising nation. He also offered to coach new MPs on media; first, please teach how to avoid becoming rich overnight through politics. He quoted a song suggesting “people are crazy”; we say it’s the Opposition acting crazy. He misquoted another poem; let me correct it humorously to suit the Opposition.

¶ 04 Sri Lanka’s 22+ million people—over 82%—live in rural and estate‑linked areas; one in six suffers multidimensional poverty, and 95% of those in rural/estate sectors. In Polonnaruwa, income inequality bites hard: top 20% receive 54.7% of national income while the bottom 20% receive only 4.6%. Our district also faces grave human–elephant conflict; recent tragic deaths include a preschool teacher and a mother of four. Another child recently died in a school playground accident—grief we witnessed firsthand.

¶ 05 On 4 Dec 2023, senior MP R.M. Ranjith Madduma Bandara said youth are leaving because thieves bankrupted the country; today IMF’s Resident Representative Dr. Peter Breuer encourages youth abroad to return, saying the economy is stabilizing. He also said no public recruitment and private sector is shrinking; today our Budget provides 30,000 jobs. He claimed Aswesuma appeals were ignored; we have added 400,000 new beneficiaries and allocated Rs. 233 billion. He said 60% of children are malnourished; we increased the preschool meal from Rs. 60 to Rs. 100. I conclude that this is the most successful Budget presented by the National People’s Power Government. Thank you.