President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has said a Bribery Commission will be established in every province, and that those opposing the equal application of the law have yet to accept the principle of equality before it, NewsFirst reported.
Speaking at a rally in Nikaweratiya on Sunday, the President said the law was being enforced equally regardless of who was involved.
What was announced
Alongside the provincial Bribery Commission plan, Dissanayake made three further commitments:
- Those accused of stealing public assets will be brought back to Sri Lanka to face justice, “regardless of where they are hiding in the world”.
- Sri Lanka will pursue an independent foreign policy without aligning itself with any other country.
- Three expressways are being constructed using public funds alone, which he described as a first in the country’s history.
”Every province” is a smaller claim than what the Commission has already announced
The provincial pledge needs setting against what the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption has itself said it is doing — and the two do not line up neatly.
On 3 October this newsroom reported that CIABOC Director General Ranga Dissanayake told Parliament’s Committee on Public Finance the Commission is recruiting 971 staff and aims to open 23 regional offices before the end of the year, as part of an IMF-linked expansion. Those estimates were approved by the committee on 29 September.
Sri Lanka has nine provinces and twenty-five districts. A commission office in each province would therefore be a narrower network than the 23 offices CIABOC has already costed and begun to site through District Secretaries. No filing reconciles the two figures, and the President’s remarks do not say whether the provincial offices are the same programme described in different terms, a first phase of it, or something additional.
The funding point is less ambiguous. The expansion CIABOC described is already inside approved budget estimates rather than awaiting a new allocation.
The numbers behind the “equal application” claim
The President’s assertion that the law is being enforced equally has a figure attached to it from three days earlier. Deputy Minister of Public Security Sunil Watagala told Parliament on 8 October that 16 former ministers and three former state ministers have been convicted in CIABOC cases since the NPP took office, and that 226 people have been arrested over bribery and corruption allegations between October 2024 and October 2026, 55 of them politicians.
Those are convictions and arrests of former office-holders, which is the government’s answer to the charge that the drive is selective. It is not, on its own, evidence that the law is applied equally — the opposition’s complaint is about who is not being investigated, and no filing addresses that.
A pledge with a live test case
The commitment to repatriate those accused of taking public assets was made on the same day police confirmed steps to bring home an organised crime suspect arrested in Bulgaria under an Interpol Red Notice. That case concerns organised crime rather than public-asset theft, so it is not an example of the pledge in action — but it is the machinery the pledge would rely on, and it is currently being used.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not say when the provincial commission offices would open, what they would cost, or whether legislation is required. It does not name the three expressways, give their cost, or say what “public funds alone” excludes — whether concessional loans, supplier credit or foreign grants.
No named individual is identified under the repatriation pledge, and no extradition request is cited. The filing carries no response from the opposition figures the President’s remarks about equality before the law were directed at, and does not name them.
Sources: NewsFirst.
Ada Derana also carried the provincial Bribery Commission announcement on 11 October. Its domain has been returning a CloudFront block to this desk for twenty-two days, so its account could not be fetched and is not cited here. The Island appears to have reported the same speech, but the page returned a redirect on every fetch route and could not be dated or verified.
