Memes

February 24, 2025 – March 2, 2025

This week’s memes

Meme 1:

Presidents’ expenditure on foreign trips

Mahinda Rajapaksa (2010 – 2014) – Rs. 3,572 million

Maithripala Sirisena (2015 – 2019) – Rs. 384 million

Gotabaya Rajapaksa (2020 – 2022) – Rs. 126 million

Ranil Wickremesinghe (2023 – 2024) – Rs. 533 million

Anura Kumara Dissanayake (2024 – 2025) – Rs. 1.8 million (September 2024 to February 2025) 

Can you enlighten us on how you travelled to China, India and Dubai and back with four people for Rs. 1.8 million? A return air ticket to China alone costs each passenger Rs. 350,000. 

Context: Speaking in parliament on February 27, Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya announced the costs incurred by former presidents as well as President Anura Kumara Dissanayake for overseas trips. The cost of Rs. 1.8 million incurred by Dissanayake for three overseas trips was questioned as being unrealistic (https://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=106150).

Meme 2:

If a topic named national security emerges suddenly…there could be a satakaya (the signature shawl worn by members of the Rajapaksa family) behind it. You do recall Easter [attacks], don’t you?

Meme 3:

(Top row: The chairperson and committee members of the National Youth Services Council (NYSC) under Ranil Wickremesinghe’s presidency)

*COPE Chairperson NPP MP Nishantha Samaraweera is going after the UNP youth

Context: On February 20, a meeting of the parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) was convened to review the auditor general’s reports for 2022 and 2023 for the NYSC and Sri Lanka Youth Services (Private) Ltd. At this meeting, the committee uncovered a series of possible mismanagement of funds as well as irregularities in procurement processes, and decided to appoint a special sub-committee to further investigate the matter (https://www.parliament.lk/news-en/view/4391).

Meme 4:

To illustrate how seeya (a disparaging reference to Ranil Wickremesinghe) and his group will fix the country in 2048: T-shirts for the National Youth Services Council had been printed by a hardware store, and some files are missing…

(For the context, please see above.)

Meme 5:

Context: Following Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s heated discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump on February 28, memes appeared juxtaposing Dissanayake in his signature double-pocket shirt with Zelensky. 

Meme 6:

A three-wheeler can be bought in the country [at this current situation], only if advanced payments are obtained for at least for 10 murders

Meme 7:

Public (1st line): The murderer escaped from our police because he ran with a gun.

Public (2nd line): If he had escaped on a bike without a helmet, our police would have gone to every corner and caught him.