• Spkr. defends convening ‘fruitless’ P’ment session per PM’s request

Speaker of the Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardana said that he had convened the Parliamentary session on Tuesday (2) at the request of Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena, emphasising that it was the Government's responsibility to prepare the contents for discussion during the said session.

Following a request made by the Premier, Abeywardana, in accordance with the relevant Parliamentary Standing Orders, took steps to convene a Parliamentary session on Tuesday. However, several parties, including Opposition groups in the Parliament, contend that convening that session resulted in no tangible outcomes.

Commenting on the related criticisms to The Daily Morning, Speaker Abeywardana said that he merely took steps to call a Parliamentary session based on the request that he received. “What I had to do was to convene the Parliament. I did it. It is the Government's job to prepare the contents to be discussed or debated there.”

It was reported that the recently signed agreements between the Paris Club and the Government regarding debt restructuring would be discussed during the said Parliamentary session. However, the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance asserted that they cannot grant approval for the agreements without a thorough study of their contents. 

Meanwhile, the Government indicated that the agreements cannot be disclosed until the entire process is finalised. As a result, these matters were not discussed during the said session. Instead, the President and the Minister of Finance, Economic Stabilisation and National Policies Ranil Wickremesinghe made a special statement in the Parliament regarding the debt restructuring process and how the country is recovering from the economic crisis. The Opposition groups in the Parliament, including the main Parliamentary Opposition, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, subsequently charged that convening the said Parliamentary session at a high cost was fruitless.