Heated accusations were levelled in Parliament on Saturday (29th November 2025) by Opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) front-rankers against the National Peoples Power (NPP) Government for intentionally undermining Sri Lanka’s Right to Information Act (RTI) Act and the independent RTI Commission.

Gayantha Karunatilleka – Former Minister Media

An independent Commission cannot be funded by the budget allocations of a Ministry which raises a clear conflict of interest, former Minister of Media Gayantha Karunatilleka told Nalinda Jayatissa, present Media Minister, asking him to ‘implement the RTI Act properly.

He said this during the votes of the Ministry of Health and Mass Media.

When the Sri Lanka Government enacted the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) in 2016, special provision was made for its fund allocation to be made to the RTI Commission of Sri Lanka through an independent Fund via the Ministry of Finance but this safeguard has been done away with and the funding is under the Media Ministry violating the RTI Act, the former Media Minister said.

‘I was proud to have been the Minister when we presented this historic Bill to the House in 2016 but we are very shocked at the way the current Government is undermining the RTI Commission and the Act,’ he said.

The former Media Minister pointed to the fact that the current Media Minister had made a joke of the RTI remedy by asking citizens and Opposition members who had requested copies of the Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) relating to Defence and signed between India and the NPP Government, to ‘get them from RTI.’

‘Answering like that is wrong’ he said. This is a law that Sri Lankans struggled for during 20 years to get it enacted, ‘do not undermine the Act, do not undermine the Commission’ he warned, waving last week’s tough Public Statement (November 20th) by the RTI Commission on the floor of the House.

The RTI Commission has gone public on this because it had no other option, he pointed out.

Later during the budget allocations, Opposition parliamentarian Ajith P Perera referred to the fact that though he had asked for certain statistics regarding the appeals heard by the Commission in 2025 ‘in good faith’, the Media Ministry had responded with wrong answers.

This reference came in relation to the Media Ministry mixing up the provisions of the RTI Act in saying that amendment of the Rules of the Commission to revise the fees for issuing information had to be put before Parliament for ‘approval.’ That is not required under the RTI Act leading journalists to ask if that slip was deliberate to justify an attempt to ‘amend’ the RTI Act.

‘We wanted to support the RTI Commission but this Ministry has twisted my parliamentary questions to undermine the Commission’ the parliamentarian said.

The response had been even more wrongly reported in the Daily Mirror newspaper, the Colombo Telegraph (CT) has been able to find out after examining daily newspapers of November 11th 2025. The Daily Mirror had reported wrongly that appeals had been left ‘unattended’ when the statistic given by the RTI Commission and reported in the Hansard was in relation to ‘appeals that had been heard and not concluded’ or ‘adjourned.’

It had also wrongly been reported that the budget of the RTI Commission had been reduced. This allegation was corrected by the Director General who pointed to the publicly available weblink, which the newspaper had not bothered to check before publishing the wrong news.  A Right of Reply sent by the Director General of the RTI Commission to the Daily Mirror had also not been carried. Pointing to this example on social media, activists mocked the self-regulatory mechanisms of the private media as ‘worse than useless.’

The RTI Commission’s Public Statement has warned against attempts to amend the RTI Act if such attempts result in a ‘dilution of the information right.’   

The problem is not its budget which the RTI Commission has said, is sufficient for its operations. The Public Statement of the Commission points to the need for that budgetary fund to be channelled into an independent Fund as required by the Act which has not happened for nine years. Similar complaints on not being allowed to operate an independent Fund, against what the relevant laws say, have been made by the Commission to Investigate Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC) and the Audit Commission.

All Commissions meanwhile complain that they are not being allowed to independently recruit staff.