Hon. T.K. Jayasundara

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, thank you for the opportunity.

¶ 02 Quoting the President’s 2026 Budget Speech: a Budget is not merely accounting; it balances development goals with fiscal sustainability and allocates resources to realize citizens’ rights — a national compact about tomorrow.

¶ 03 Therefore the Budget is part of a long-term plan, and debate should address political and economic philosophy. Unfortunately, the Opposition offers little substance. A Galle District MP compared this Budget to riding a motorcycle in a death well. If so, let me recall the actual origin of that death well: the UNP tradition. I hold here the 15 November 1977 Budget Speech by Ronnie de Mel — a UNP icon. He said then that instead of doles, what people need is employment and proposed a broad-based employment program with a Rs. 50 monthly subsistence for the jobless from January 1978.

¶ 04 Forty-seven years later, the country kept circling the same well — UNP, its offshoot SJB, and its ally SLPP. That is why they cannot critique this Budget substantively: their model failed over four decades. Their dogma has crumbled. As the saying goes, praxis without theory is blind; theory without praxis is barren. Today’s Opposition is blind praxis, driven by the resentment of lost privilege, hurling baseless attacks.

¶ 05 Our economic model is a people’s participatory economy: everyone contributes; everyone shares fairly in the benefits. We value people as human capital — healthy, educated, cooperative, and fulfilled citizens. The estate wage increase to Rs. 1,750 is seen in that light — recognizing long-exploited labour as national human capital, not a commodity.

¶ 06 We have precedents of leveraging human capital — for example, after the 2005 tsunami, the southern railway from Galle onwards was rebuilt substantially through national human effort.

¶ 07 [Speech continues in the next segment.]