Opposition MP Chanaka Madugoda has attacked the government over the power cuts by inverting the slogan it was elected on, telling reporters that a government which promised to deliver “the whole country to Anura” has instead pushed the whole country into darkness.

The remark is a play on words that does not survive translation. The National People’s Power campaigned on රටම අනුරට — “the whole country to Anura,” meaning to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Madugoda’s line turns අනුරට (“to Anura”) into අඳුරට (“into darkness”), two words that differ by a single letter in Sinhala.

“This government came to power saying ‘the whole country to Anura,’” he said. “But today, whatever has become of the country going to Anura, this government has certainly sent the country into darkness.”

The electricity bill promise

His substantive charge concerns a specific pledge.

Madugoda said the government had promised before taking office to cut electricity bills by one third, and that instead of delivering it, “in a very short time this government has reached the point of taking the country to power cuts,” Hiru News reported.

The coal claim, and a prediction he says was laughed at

Madugoda tied the outage directly to the substandard coal controversy, and framed it as a warning the opposition had already given.

“We said continuously in Parliament what the result of bringing inferior coal would be,” he said. “When we said that, the government’s people laughed. But as an irony of fate, those who laughed have had to answer for it today.”

“Because of bringing this inferior coal, the Norochcholai plant has gone out of service today. It is because of inferior coal that we have to sit in darkness today.”

This is a different MP from the one who made the same claim on Monday

The attribution matters, because this desk has already published a near-identical allegation from a different member.

On Monday, SLPP MP D.V. Chanaka blamed the islandwide blackout on substandard coal, citing the Ceylon Electricity Board’s own reports to Parliament. Chanaka Madugoda is a different person. The shared first name is a genuine collision, and the two should not be merged or read as one MP repeating himself.

What is notable is that two opposition members, separately, have now put the same causal claim on the record within three days.

What the record supports and what it does not

The inferior-coal controversy is documented and costed. Parliament has been told the loss runs to Rs. 18.3 billion, and a commission of inquiry into the procurement has had its term extended to 16 December.

The causal link between that coal and the 17 October failure is a different question, and it remains an allegation rather than a finding. No official cause for the Norochcholai shutdown has been published. The plant’s collapse cost the grid 810 MW, and the power cuts authorised by the PUCSL have run since Sunday evening.

Madugoda’s statement that the plant “has gone out of service” was also overtaken on the day he made it: the National System Operator said one Lakvijaya generator was returning to the grid on Wednesday, adding 300 MW, with the plant expected to resume generation by Thursday.

Not reported

Hiru does not give Madugoda’s party, the venue or the time of his remarks beyond saying he was speaking to the media, and does not say which parliamentary debates he is referring to. It carries no government response.

Nor does the filing address the obvious test of his central claim: the CEB has not published a technical cause for the 17 October failure, so neither Madugoda’s attribution to coal quality nor any alternative explanation can be checked against an official finding. No other verified newsroom had filed on his remarks at the time of writing.