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Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayaka has got off to a rather inauspicious start with the presentation of his maiden Budget to Parliament. With the vote on the Second Reading of the Budget still a few days away, the Minister is faced with the rather unusual situation of having a ‘No Confidence’ motion against him, in which he is accused of falsifying statistics and information presented to the House in his long, drawn out Budget speech.

Not surprisingly, many MPs in the MP Mahinda Rajapaksa loyalist group and call themselves the “Joint Opposition”, who signed the motion, have discovered that all is not well in the first Budget of the Unity Government presented by Mr Karunanayaka on Nov. 20.

The motion handed over to Speaker Karu Jayasuriya refers to one instance which they have used to illustrate that the “Budget proposals presented by Minister Ravi Karunanayake for 2016, have attempted to mislead the public and Parliament and contain wrong, erroneous statistics and information.”

“The Finance Minister said that Government had allocated Rs 121,352 million for the Education sector in Budget 2016. He had exaggerated the financial allocations for the Education sector by adding the value of buildings and lands belonging to the Ministry, under Recurrent expenditure. He had amplified the allocation by 278%, compared with the previous year,” the Motion said.

It seems it’s not only the ‘Joint Opposition” that is unhappy with some of Mr Karunanayake‘s proposals. President Maithripala Sirisena, who held several meetings with the Cabinet before finalising Budgetary matters, has already reversed one of the proposals put forward by Minister Karunanayake. On Wednesday, President Sirisena instructed the Finance Minister to reinstate the tax he reduced on beer with less than 5% alcohol content.

The President felt that such reductions would run contrary to his version of the ‘mathata thitha’ programme of his predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa, as there was the “possibility of increased consumption of low alcohol beer.”This seems just one instance where there is confusion about the Finance Minister’s proposals. Another is the one pertaining to the enhanced fee on Emission Test Certificates (ETC) for vehicles.

The Minister announced in his Budget speech that the ETC fee for vehicles will be enhanced to Rs 5,000. While many were under the impression it would apply to three-wheelers and motorcycles too, the Minister told Parliament this week the enhanced fee applies only to vehicles on four wheels.

This levy, applicable to motor vehicles over three-years-old, will be payable to the Divisional Secretariat at the point of renewal of the annual licence, and is in addition to the amount paid for the test itself. With the vote on the Second Reading for the Appropriation Bill set for Wednesday, there are likely to be more reversals in the proposals announced by the Finance Minister.

The restrictions placed on fertilizer subsidy recipients, issuing of vouchers for uniforms to schoolchildren and moves to amalgamate the EPF and ETF are some of the other issues that have come in for heavy criticism by the Opposition including members of the JVP.

The stentorian voices of the “Joint Opposition” members during the Budget debate have shown they are determined to upset the unity government’s apple cart. And, even though they may lack the numbers, their voices are being heard much louder than those of both the UNP and SLFP MPs in government put together .