Former Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena has denied allegations over his use of vehicles and fuel while in office, saying the findings of a special parliamentary audit are being distorted by certain groups to mislead the public.
In a statement, Abeywardena said the audit into the 8th and 9th Parliaments identified irregularities in fuel allocations, vehicle privileges and expenditure attached to several senior parliamentary posts — the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Chairman of Committees and Secretary-General, the Daily Mirror reported. He said he had no objection to legal action if there were evidence of wrongdoing.
What he disputes, and what he does not
His denial is narrower than it first appears. Abeywardena’s central rebuttal concerns the vehicle count: he said the audit itself confirmed he used only vehicles officially provided by Parliament, against earlier claims that he had used nine. Those vehicles, he said, were assigned for official duties and security under Presidential Secretariat circulars.
He does not dispute the fuel volumes. The figures he cites — a Speaker’s Office monthly average of 3,994 litres in 2023 and 6,122 litres in 2024 — are the same numbers the audit produced, which recorded a 155% rise for 2024 measured against a 2022 baseline and found no effective ceiling on the Speaker’s fuel draw. What is contested is the interpretation, not the arithmetic.
An allegation that does not reconcile
The nine-vehicle figure appears to trace to an earlier round of this dispute. In March 2025, responding to Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake, Abeywardena said every Speaker is allocated three vehicles — one official car and two escorts — and that a Special Task Force jeep was assigned to him in addition, giving four.
Ratnayake had alleged at the time that the former Speaker used Rs. 33 million of fuel in the nine months from 1 January to 24 September 2024. That figure sits awkwardly beside the audit’s own: the National Audit Office put the Speaker’s Office annual fuel spending for the whole of 2024 at Rs. 26.05 million. A nine-month total roughly a quarter higher than the audited twelve-month total cannot be reconciled without knowing that the two cover different things — and neither account says what those scopes are.
The Sri Lanka Guardian, reporting the same statement, said the audit spans 2015 to 2024 and covers Speakers, Deputy Speakers, committee chairpersons, the Secretary-General, Assistant Secretaries-General and heads of departments, and that Abeywardena had already issued public explanations twice in March 2025.
Parliament’s administration has not responded publicly, and no other verified newsroom had reported the statement at the time of writing.
