Sri Lanka president to present policy statement at parliament’s inauguration

COLOMBO: President Anura Kumara Dissanayake will be presenting his government’s policy statement at the inaugural session of the new parliament on November 21, it was announced on Saturday.

Dissanayake's address to the inaugural session of the new parliament – the 10th parliament since the 1978 presidential constitution – will be at 3 pm on November 21, the parliament’s press office announced.

The ruling National People's Power (NPP) of Dissanayake won a landslide victory in Wednesday’s parliamentary election gaining absolute control of the House with 159 seats – well over the 150 mark for two thirds majority.

Dissanayake, who had announced the snap polls shortly after his election as president in September, will appoint a new Prime Minister and a 25-member cabinet on Monday with scientific allocation of subjects for the ministries, his party said.

The president's statement – to be made from the Speaker’s chair as per the tradition – would be delivered after all the members have taken oath under the chairmanship of the Secretary General of Parliament Kushani Rohanadheera and the new speaker, the deputy speaker and other relevant authorities are appointed.

Parliament has also announced an induction session for new MPs on November 25, 26 and 27 for the over 150 new faces in the new 225 member assembly.

This was the first parliamentary election since Sri Lanka plunged into an economic crisis when the island nation declared sovereign default in mid-April of 2022, its first since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. Almost civil-war-like conditions and months of public protests led to the fleeing of the then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Since assuming office, Dissanayake has stayed on course with his predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe’s International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme.

The country is still in the process of recovering from its worst economic crisis in history as the Dissanayake government faces the challenge of meeting the IMF targets on revenue in the third review of the USD 2.9 billion programme.