11 May 2026

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) notes that the Prevention of Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill was tabled in Parliament on 5^th May 2026. This statement highlights key concerns arising from the proposed Bill, building on issues previously raised by CPA in relation to similar legislation (see CPA statement of 9 April 2026).

The stated objective of the Bill is to align Sri Lanka’s legal framework with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and to strengthen the country’s asset recovery and financial investigation regime, particularly in light of the Proceeds of Crime Act (2025). While compliance with international obligations is necessary, CPA reiterates its concern that such laws should not undermine existing constitutional safeguards including fundamental rights. CPA notes that the FATF framework also requires such laws to comply with local and international human rights standards.

In terms of substance, CPA highlights several provisions of the Bill that raise serious constitutional concerns. Notably, provisions enabling the compulsion of sworn affidavits or statements from suspects engage the right against self-incrimination and the presumption of innocence. While such mechanisms are used in other jurisdictions to address serious financial crime and illicit enrichment, their adoption requires caution. If not carefully framed, they risk reversing the burden of proof and undermining core safeguards of the criminal justice system. Any such framework must therefore balance effective law enforcement with the protection of fundamental rights, which can only be achieved through a broad-based and inclusive consultative process.

CPA is further concerned by the expansion of executive powers relating to the freezing of assets. The proposed provisions permit law enforcement authorities to freeze not only suspected proceeds of crime but also corresponding or untainted assets, without prior judicial authorisation in the first instance for 14 working days. Such measures risk arbitrary interference with property rights and may have severe consequences for lawful businesses and livelihoods, particularly given the extended duration of such freezing orders without adequate judicial oversight.

The Bill also introduces broad surveillance powers, including access to digital systems, covert monitoring and the use of intrusive investigative techniques based on a relatively low threshold of suspicion. CPA notes that these provisions lack sufficient statutory safeguards, including clear limitations, oversight mechanisms and protections for privileged, sensitive or confidential information. In the absence of such safeguards, these powers pose a significant threat to the right to privacy.

CPA also notes with concern the expansion of the scope of “unlawful activity” and the removal of the requirement for a prior conviction for the predicate offence in money laundering prosecutions. While recognising that money laundering is treated as an autonomous offence in international practice, CPA warns that, in the Sri Lankan context, such provisions may facilitate the misuse of anti-money laundering laws to target individuals and entities, including those engaged in legitimate commercial or expressive activities.

These proposed amendments must be viewed against the backdrop of an existing legal framework that provides extensive powers of investigation, asset freezing and forfeiture. Sri Lanka’s experience demonstrates that broad and vaguely defined powers are susceptible to misuse, particularly against dissenting voices and those critical of the government.

In light of the above, CPA calls on the government to withdraw the Bill in its present form and to initiate a transparent and consultative process involving all relevant stakeholders in order to draft a new Bill. It is imperative that any legislative reform aimed at addressing money laundering and related offences incorporates robust safeguards to ensure compliance with constitutional guarantees and to prevent abuse by the executive.

The written submissions filed by CPA in respect of the Prevention of Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill can be viewed here.

2 May 2026, Colombo:

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) expresses serious concern about the implications of the JVP–NPP government’s Praja Shakthi and Clean Sri Lanka programmes for the institutional fabric of constitutional government and public administration in Sri Lanka. While reform of governance is both necessary and overdue, the manner in which these initiatives are being conceived and implemented raises fundamental questions about constitutional principle, administrative autonomy, and devolved and local governance. These questions go to the heart of the long-term quality of our democracy and the future stability of the state.

Sri Lanka’s constitutional and legal framework of executive government, together with well-established conventions of public administration, is historically nested within the Commonwealth tradition of constitutional government. Within this tradition, notwithstanding the introduction of a directly elected executive President by the 1978 Constitution, the political executive derives much of its authority from Parliament and both President and Ministers remain accountable to it and to the public. The administrative executive – the public service – is expected to be politically neutral, professionally competent, and permanent, serving the government of the day while remaining insulated from partisan control. These distinctions are not mere formalities. They are the institutional preconditions for responsible government, the rule of law, and the protection of fundamental rights.

It is in this context that CPA is deeply troubled by the JVP–NPP government’s apparent insertion of a pervasive parallel layer of party bureaucracy into the apparatus of the state, from the highest levels of administration to the lowest. Through Praja Shakthi structures and Clean Sri Lanka implementation mechanisms, not to mention openly politicised appointments to senior administrative service positions, there is growing evidence of party-aligned actors being emplaced to exercise influence over decisions that properly belong to the professional public service; or are decisions that must be made by elected officials acting on impartial public service advice and accountable to national, provincial, and local legislatures, not by functionaries  and commissars answering to party headquarters at Pelawatte. This therefore represents not simply politicisation in the familiar sense, but the construction of an alternative chain of authority that runs alongside – and increasingly through – the constitutional state.

This development is categorically different from the old patronage politics of the ‘bourgeois’ parties. What distinguishes the present moment is the presence of an amorphously articulated yet clearly visible ideological framework – depending on whether one is listening to Anura Kumara Dissanayake or Tilvin Silva –  through which the government appears to be instrumentalising, and in some cases subordinating, the institutions of the state to the imperatives of the party. Rhetorically encoded as NPP anti‑corruption action, the JVP’s Marxist-Leninist praxes are being hardwired into everyday administration, fundamentally altering the relationship between party, state, and public service. As it was the case with the UF government and the 1972 Constitution, this will erode the constitutional boundaries that safeguard the institutional autonomy of the public service and destroy what institutional competence and social trust it has left.

There is also an emerging and dangerous mismatch between public expectation and governmental intent. Many citizens who voted for the JVP–NPP in 2024 did so in the hope of “system change” understood as anti-corruption, accountability, and a restoration of administrative integrity. This electoral mandate was secured through the JVP’s rebranding as the NPP, a project that blunted the sharp edges of revolutionary socialism and class antagonism and repackaged them as a programme of social democratic respectability. What now appears to be unfolding is a reversal of that process and a far more ambitious attempt at an ideological reframing of the Sri Lankan state itself. This is not reform of the system. It is an effort to reconfigure the system according to a partisan and ideological vision that was neither clearly articulated nor democratically deliberated at the time of the 2024 national elections.

Sri Lanka’s modern constitutional order has evolved over two centuries through political habit, legal practice, institutional memory, and constitutional convention, which are our own but which are rooted in the pragmatism and moderation of the Commonwealth tradition, not in revolutionary ideology or class politics. Tampering with this inheritance through the systematic politicisation of administration risks long-term damage to state capacity, professionalism, and public trust. The design and operation of programmes such as Praja Shakthi and Clean Sri Lankamust be critically reassessed with a view to reaffirming the independence of the public service and ensuring that any programme of reform remains firmly anchored in constitutional principle. The alternative is an erosion of constitutional government that will not end well for Sri Lanka’s democracy or its people.

20 April 2026

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) welcomes the resignation of Kumara Jayakody MP as the Minister for Energy on 17 April 2026, for which we publicly called earlier. While from the perspective of constitutional governance the resignation is a case of better late than never, we note that the Government’s display of delay and drift before reaching this conclusion was wholly unnecessary and damaging to our fabric of constitutional governance.

Sri Lanka’s current constitutional framework on executive government is built upon the earlier foundations of the Westminster-type constitutions we have had since independence. Our Ministers are drawn from and remain Members of Parliament. Through Questions, Committees, and the Confidence Principle, our Cabinet is collectively as well as individually responsible to Parliament. These institutions and procedures are found expressed in the hard law of the Constitution and in the soft rules of the Standing Orders.

But as in any other Commonwealth country, this legal framework of power and accountability is meant to be animated by a wider set of political principles – known as ‘constitutional conventions’ – that ensure not just lawful but constitutional behaviour by members of the political executive. The distinction between legality and constitutionality is important: it reminds us that power must be exercised not merely in accordance with the letter of the law but also in conformity with the political morality of the republic. Constitutional conventions can be described in many different ways but three of their most important dimensions are: that they embody a country’s constitutional morality; that they have to be understood and accepted by the governing elite irrespective of party; and that they are only effective to the extent they are politically enforced. Governing with knowledge of, and consistently with constitutional conventions, builds public confidence in institutions, strengthens democracy and constitutionalism, builds social trust across party political divides, and in all these ways, delivers peace, order, and good government.

In functioning Commonwealth constitutional democracies, conventions are most widespread in relation to the exercise of executive power. Ministers are held to a higher standard of behaviour than ordinary citizens or even other MPs. They are accountable not only legally to the courts, but also politically to Parliament and the public. When a Minister faces serious allegations of corruption, fraud, or incompetence, convention demands that he or she resigns or is dismissed until those allegations have been investigated and resolved. The presumption of innocence that ordinary citizens have the benefit of in relation to criminal proceedings have no relevance whatsoever to the question of ministerial political accountability. There does not have to be a CID investigation, an indictment by the Bribery Commission, or a damning finding by the Auditor General, or a vote of confidence in Parliament, or the announcement of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry, before there is a ministerial resignation. Jayakody’s ministerial resignation should have been the first step in dealing with the coal scandal when it first surfaced in 2025, especially in the case of a high-minded Government elected on such an explicit and even revolutionary mandate to sweep away the decayed culture of the old regime.

That the country was treated to the spectacle of all this drama before the Minister and his appointing authority the President considered it appropriate for him to resign may have many explanations. But one of the saddest revelations in the ongoing saga of the coal scandal so far must surely be that absolutely no one in our new governing elite showed the slightest understanding of the conventions of our constitution. They embody the very principles that must be upheld, and the Government must be seen to be upholding, if we are to retain any confidence in the reformist promise of the NPP.

09 April 2026

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) notes the publication of the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Bill, Financial Transactions Reporting (Amendment) and the Prevention of Money Laundering (Amendment) Bill in March 2026. Of these Bills the Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Bill and the Financial Transactions Reporting (Amendment) Bill were tabled in Parliament today [9th April 2026]. This statement will focus only on the bills tabled in Parliament.

The purpose of these Bills is to ostensibly comply with the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which is the global standard setting body for anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). There are significant concerns as to how successive governments have used the FATF framework as cover to undermine rights of free association and expression. As such these latest amendments need to be viewed with heightened scrutiny.

CPA’s concerns around the Bill relate to both the contents and the law-making process. On process, CPA notes that these bills were not open to the public and stakeholders for any meaningful consultative process. Additionally, the timing raises questions. The bills were tabled in Parliament days prior to the Sinhala and Tamil new year holidays and when sittings of court have been suspended. In terms of the Constitution, citizens now have a limited window of two weeks to challenge the constitutional consistency of these complicated bills before the Supreme Court. This is not the first-time governments have rushed through important legislation, severely limiting the public and other stakeholders to engage with and challenge proposed laws and raising questions of the intention of the government in the speed with which this has been done. CPA raises these points when the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction does not allow the Court to consider the policy implications of the proposed bills or their desirability.

CPA further notes that the proposed bills consist of numerous problematic provisions which include:, the broad definition of offences, the expansion of the powers granted to the financial intelligence unit including the enhancement of investigative powers with limited  judicial oversight, especially in the context of the Financial Transactions Reporting (Amendment) Bill. This provision places significant burdens on professionals with regard to reporting which will have a direct impact on their ability to discharge their professional responsibilities. CPA is also concerned with the integrity of the evidence collected through the “covert investigative powers” enabled by these bills and the significant restrictions on the right to privacy and the security of the information gathered through such investigations.

These amendments will be added to a legal system that already provides broad powers of investigation, assets freezing and mechanisms to deal with proceeds of crimes. Whilst Sri Lanka needs to adhere to its international obligations, this does not automatically justify the enactment of broad laws. This is especially considering Sri Lanka’s history of utilising such laws to target individuals who have been critical of the government and to crack down on dissent.

Thus, CPA calls on the government to withdraw these bills and allow for a consultative process which is open to the public and all stakeholders in order to develop a coherent legal system which can prevent and punish money laundering and the financing of terrorism but also have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent abuse and misuse by actors within the executive arm of government.

March 31^st 2026, Colombo, Sri Lanka:

The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) expresses serious concern about Mr. Kumara Jayakody continuing to hold a ministerial position, after he has been indicted in the High Court, reportedly on charges relating to corruption / financial misconduct. According to media reports, the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) filed these charges, alleging that in 2016, while serving as Manager of the Procurement and Import Division of the Ceylon Fertilizer Company, Mr. Jayakody was involved in irregularities relating to procurement. He has since been produced before the Colombo High Court and released on bail pending trial.

It is incumbent that those holding public office abide by the highest standards of integrity and professionalism that aspire public trust and confidence in government. Conduct that falls short of such standards must be dealt with swiftly and decisively. The indictment also comes at a time when allegations have surfaced into possible irregularities in the procurement of coal for power generation, a function that falls within the purview of Mr. Jayakody’ Ministry. Such conduct amidst an evolving energy crisis raises critical questions of transparency and accountability of public decision-making and the suitability and integrity of those holding public office.

Sri Lanka has witnessed years of mismanagement that resulted in the public demand for greater public accountability in 2022. The National People’s Power (NPP) secured its mandate in 2024 on the promise of a change in the system of governance and to dismantle the culture of corruption and impunity with a commitment towards accountable and transparent governance and government. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the NPP Government must uphold these promises, demonstrating that those who hold public office abide by the principles they espoused in the campaign trail and fundamental to ensure there is no actual and perceived conflicts of interest.

In such a context, CPA calls on Mr. Kumara Jayakody to forthwith resign from his ministerial position. It must also be noted that Mr. Jayakody’s continued functioning in his ministerial position, undermines the work of the CIABOC and the public faith and confidence in the CIABOC. Furthermore, CPA urges the government to introduce and fully implement a Ministerial Code of Conduct that sets out standards and processes to facilitate accountable and transparent government and garner public trust in those holding public office. Failure to provide leadership and act decisively in this instance risks signalling to the public that the NPP’s mandate for reform was merely rhetorical.

See related content;

CPA calls for the resignation of the Minister of Law and Order (9^th November 2015)

CPA Calls for the Resignation of Minister Ravi Karunanayake (4^th August 2017)

CPA calls for the immediate resignation of the State Minister of Prison Management and Prisoners’ Rehabilitation Lohan Ratwatte (15^th September 2021)

Click Here to Download the Statement in English

Sinhala & Tamil Translations to follow.