By The Pulseline News Desk
Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian Shanakiyan Rasamanickam has expressed disappointment over the absence of any reference to the Tamil national question in President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s Budget 2027 speech, warning that the Government’s approach to the unresolved ethnic issue raises serious concerns among Tamil communities.
Speaking during the parliamentary debate on the Budget, Rasamanickam has said it was particularly unfortunate that the President had not made even a single reference to the Tamil national question in his policy statement outlining the Government’s priorities for the coming year.
He has stressed that a budget speech was not merely an account of the country’s fiscal position or economic performance, but also a statement of the Government’s policy direction and plans for the year ahead.
Rasamanickam has noted that previous Presidents, including Ranil Wickremesinghe, Maithripala Sirisena and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had at least acknowledged the existence of the unresolved national question in their policy statements, even though successive administrations had failed to find a lasting solution.
“Every President, every country’s Head of State, in their policy statements, have acknowledged the fact that there is an unresolved national issue, the Tamil national question, that it needs to be resolved,” he has said.
He has added that successive governments had proposed different mechanisms to address the issue, but none had succeeded in delivering a resolution.
Questions over reconciliation and missing persons
Rasamanickam has also questioned the Government’s approach to accountability and reconciliation, particularly its allocations for the Office on Missing Persons (OMP) and the Office for Reparations.
While acknowledging the budgetary allocations to these institutions, he has argued that the domestic mechanisms established to address the grievances of victims had not received the acceptance of the affected communities.
He has said allocating public funds to mechanisms rejected by victims raised questions about whether the Government was genuinely addressing their concerns. “The domestic mechanism is a mechanism that the victim community has rejected. So you all are allocating money to a mechanism where the victim community is not going to be part of,” he has told Parliament.
His remarks highlight continuing concerns among families of the disappeared and sections of the Tamil community over the effectiveness and credibility of domestic accountability mechanisms.
Questions over airport allocations
The MP has also questioned the utilisation of funds allocated in the previous year’s Budget for the development of the Trincomalee and Jaffna airports.
He has recalled that Rs. 1 billion had been allocated for the two airports in Budget 2026 and sought clarification on how the money had been spent.
“Where was that Rs. 1 billion for the Trincomalee and Jaffna airports spent last year?” he has asked.
His criticism extended beyond individual budgetary allocations, with the MP warning that the Government’s broader political direction towards the Tamil national question was becoming increasingly concerning.
Warning over political consequences
Rasamanickam has cautioned that the absence of any reference to the Tamil national question could create the impression that the Government either did not recognise the existence of an unresolved ethnic issue or considered it already settled.
He has warned that such an approach could have serious political consequences, particularly if the concerns and aspirations of Tamil people continued to be overlooked.
“If the objective is to say that there is no Tamil national question, if the objective is to say that you all have resolved any ethnic issue that this country faced, then I think the Tamil people will teach this government a very, very, very harsh lesson in the future,” he has said.
His intervention places renewed focus on the question of political reconciliation and ethnic accountability under the NPP administration, as the Government presents its third national budget.
While Budget 2027 outlines the administration’s economic and development priorities, Rasamanickam’s criticism raises questions about the place of national reconciliation, the grievances of Tamil communities and a political settlement to the longstanding ethnic question in the Government’s broader policy agenda.
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