10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva

Samagi Jana Balawegaya· Colombo· 3 December 2024 ·Procedural: Procedural: Points of Order and Standing Orders Clarifications (Vote on Account, Ministry Advisory Committees, Party Leaders' Agreement)

Public FinanceParliamentary Procedure
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Dr. Harsha de Silva cautioned the Speaker against allowing a Vote on Account or similar fiscal measure to bypass the Committee on Public Finance, arguing that such instances had occurred only in exceptional or controversial circumstances. He cited precedents from the October 2018 constitutional crisis, the period before the 2019 election, and under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and urged that the practice not be normalized.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, please do not make this a precedent. This was done on three occasions, including during the so-called constitutional coup in October 2018. Afterwards, just before the 2019 Election, a Vote on Account was passed without referring it to the Committee on Public Finance. Subsequently, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa also did the same. Please do not make this a precedent, Hon. Speaker.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 3 December 2024 ·No. 1733459564028450 ·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
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Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 3 December 2024. No. 1733459564028450. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/29694