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Sri Lanka’s national flag, with its gold lion clutching a sword, is one of the country’s most emotionally charged symbols. Any suggestion of tampering with the national flag touches a raw nerve across the island’s communities. So, when a post dressed up as an official cabinet announcement claimed the government intended to strip the lion from the flag to appease minority communities, it spread rapidly and stirred anger online.
We set out to establish whether any such cabinet decision had actually been taken.
Social Media Posts
The post, styled as an official government cabinet announcement, claimed that Cabinet Spokesperson Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa had stated the government planned to replace the lion on the national flag with a different colour on the grounds that the lion symbol represents only the Sinhalese and that such a change would ease other communities’ concerns.
The claim spread far and wide across social media, shared as though it were a genuine government notice.
Fact-Check
Our investigation found that no mainstream media outlet had reported Cabinet spokesperson Dr Nalinda Jayatissa making any such statement. A claim of this magnitude, an official move to redesign the national flag, would have drawn wide coverage, yet there was none.
No official Cabinet decision
A review of the official records of the Department of Government Information and the Cabinet Office confirmed that no proposal or decision to alter Sri Lanka’s national flag had ever been made.
Minister Nalinda Jayatissa addresses the false claims
When we contacted the Minister directly, he confirmed that the post was fabricated. He said no decision to change the national flag had been made and that he had never made such a statement anywhere.
Addressing the viral false claims during the weekly Cabinet briefing, Minister Nalinda said that investigations are underway into personnel sharing the false propaganda.
Constitutional law
Under Sri Lanka’s Constitution, changing the national flag or anthem requires a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament together with a nationwide referendum. Neither the Cabinet nor any individual minister has the authority to alter the national flag alone.
Separately, a live broadcast of a media briefing by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake recently showed a temporary colour distortion in the national flag in the background, caused by a camera white-balance glitch. Some quarters questioned whether this technical glitch was in fact an attempt to change the flag, claiming the orange stripe representing the Tamil community had been replaced with red. In reality, the footage confirmed the orange stripe was present all along and merely appeared red because of the white-balance issue. Archived Link
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Conclusion
Social media posts claiming that Cabinet Spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa announced a Cabinet decision to remove the lion from the national flag and replace it with a different colour are entirely fabricated and false.
No such Cabinet decision exists. The Minister himself denied the statement; official Cabinet records show no such proposal, and the Constitution places any change to national symbols beyond the reach of the Cabinet, requiring a two-thirds parliamentary majority and a national referendum. The fake post appears designed to mislead the public and incite racial tension. Sri Lanka’s national flag remains unchanged.
Title: Is the lion about to vanish from Sri Lanka’s national flag?
Fact Check By: Pavithra Sandamali
Result: False
