The Hon. Ramalingam Chandrasekar - Minister of Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources
The Minister criticized the Opposition for moving a Motion to Postpone the House on the fuel issue while no Opposition Members were present in the Chamber during the debate. He argued that the absence showed the Motion was not pursued in earnest and that the Opposition had failed in its attempt to raise public concern over the issue.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, today’s debate is being held on a Motion to Postpone the House moved by the Opposition. Yet, at this moment, not a single Member of the Opposition is present in the Chamber, Hon. Presiding Member. It is evident whether the Opposition brought this Motion in earnest or merely to confuse the people. Having tried to confuse the people, the Opposition itself is now confused and has ended up “settapochchi.” What this shows is nothing but the Opposition’s defeat at this moment. They tried to agitate the people by raising the fuel issue, but in the end it is the Opposition that is agitated and finished.
¶ 02 Hon. Presiding Member, the Opposition said this Postponement Motion was to draw attention to the severe crisis affecting the people and to alert the Government so the country could be rescued. They have been saying this since morning. But now not a single Member of the Opposition is here. They have retreated that far.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 19 March 2026 ·No. 23381 ·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/30231
Cite as: The Hon. Ramalingam Chandrasekar - Minister of Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 19 March 2026. No. 23381. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/30231