Sri Lanka ruling party faction sceptical of president’s 2024 budget
COLOMBO – An apparent rift between President Ranil Wickremesinghe and a section of the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) appears to be widening, judging by comments made by SLPP legislator Namal Rajapaksa on the president’s 2024 budget.
“We must study the budget. He had presented a lot of these proposals in last year’s budget too. They don’t seem to have been implemented,” Rajapaksa told reporters Monday (13) afternoon, following the presentation of the 2024 budget by President Wickremesinghe.
“Those proposals have been presented again. There is the question of whether these things were implemented at the ground level,” he said, adding that some of last year’s proposals become a reality.
“We’re waiting to see if this year’s budget too will be limited to a presentation,” he said, adding that the SLPP supports “pro-people decisions” and that the party has presented its proposals and will do so again during the debate.
“Let’s see [whether] the president accepts our proposals and implements them,” he said..
The Hambantota district parliamentarian said the SLPP government was elected by 6.9 million Sri Lankans who had voted for former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who was forced to resign following a series of mass protests dubbed the aragalaya, in 2022. As such, he said the budget proposals of President Wickremesinghe, who also holds the finance portfolio, must reflect the policies of the SLPP government.
Noting that Ranil Wickremesinghe had become president through the aragalaya, Rajapaksa said he was the finance minister of the SLPP government, hence the party’s policies should be in the budget proposals.
“We’ll express our views on that in the debate. Let’s see how we can make it a reality in the future. There is no point telling fairy tales if it’s not practically worked on the ground,” he added.
-economynext.com
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