Uproar over two budget speeches

By Ashwin Hemmathagama – Our Lobby Correspondent

Going against Parliamentary traditions, a new print of the ‘Budget Speech’ found on the tables of members heated the House yesterday. Speaker Karu Jayasuriya taking stern action to control the assembly suspended the House for 10 minutes.

UPFA MP Dinesh Gunawardena seeking clarifications from Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayake, who was not available in the House, charged the Government for violating traditions. “We found this book on our tables with the title ‘Budget Speech’. During the Budget Speech, we received a book last week. We followed the contents of that book. Is there a difference between the two books? It is the duty of Finance Minister to explain section by section. If there are changes, the methods of making the changes are clearly mentioned in Priyani Wijesekara’s book ‘Parliamentary Practice in Sri Lanka’. We need to know your response for presenting two books,” said Minister Gunawardena who charged the Government for presenting two Budget Speeches. 

Endorsing MP Gunwardena’s concerns, opposition lawmaker Anura Dissanayake said: “When the Finance Minister presented the Budget Speech, certain sections were omitted. We need to know if there are differences between the book presented that day and the new book. We are not trying to sabotage the debate. If it is different from the previous book, the Budget Debate has to be started fresh.”

Following the instructions of Speaker Jayasuriya, Minister of Higher Education and Highways and the Leader of the House of Parliament Lakshman Kiriella turned down having differences between the two books in terms of the content. “You are claiming there are changes. What are these changes? There are no changes. If there are changes the Minister of Finance will clarify. There is one Budget Speech. But there was a shortage of books on the day Budget Speech was presented. However, there was a lapse of printing the Sinhala book.”

Giving reasons for the printing lapses in the Sinhala edition debate Minister of Finance Ravi Karunanayke said: “The books were on print till 11.30a.m. on that day. But at 5a.m. in the morning one machine had a technical failure where three pages got mixed up. There were 50 books that had issues with regards to three pages on Sinhala print. But other copies were okay. This is an issue of the Finance Ministry.”