March 9, 2026 – March 22, 2026 | Vol.16, #11 & 12 | ISSN 3084-9330
Photo credits: Tamil Guardian
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Over the past few weeks, Sinhala media has primarily focused on the government’s handling of the fuel scarcity and on external supply chain disruptions resulting from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. While the initial triggers were international, the local media narrative centred on the state’s efficacy in managing the subsequent scarcity.
The coverage spanned print, television, and social media commentary. Social media narratives and conversations were monitored and analysed using specialised digital tracking tools.[1]
This week’s analysis is set out under three headings.
I. What were the key events that captured public attention?
March 2: At a special media briefing on the situation in the Middle East, Cabinet Spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa stated that there was no risk of a fuel shortage in the country and urged the public not to panic. He added that the situation did not warrant reintroducing the QR code system.
March 15: The government reintroduced the QR-based National Fuel Pass as a precautionary measure to manage domestic fuel reserves amid escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
March 16: Reports from fuel stations suggested an uneven relaunch of the QR system, with some stations not yet equipped with QR scanners and others not enforcing it. Amid long queues, motorists reported technical problems that prevented them from registering or updating their details, including being unable to register through a new mobile number, add newly purchased vehicles, or reach the support hotline.
March 16: As part of its fuel-conservation measures, the government declared Wednesdays a public holiday, exempting essential services, including health, ports, water services, and Sri Lanka Customs.
In this week’s issue of MPA, we examine how Sinhala media attributed responsibility for the fuel scarcity, the drivers that made certain framings more politically salient than others, and the extent to which these framings influenced the government’s public standing.
II. How was blame apportioned within the Sinhala media discourse?
Blame for fuel scarcity in Sinhala media discourse was not uniformly apportioned. Instead, four distinct framings emerged in how the scarcity was explained and responsibility was assigned: externalisation, moral deflection, exposing contradiction, and exposing incompetence. While the first two worked to displace responsibility away from the government for the scarcity, the latter two directed attention back to the government’s conduct and preparedness.
Table 1 maps these competing blame narratives featured in Sinhala media discourse.
Table 1: Competing blame narratives in media discourse on the cause of the fuel crisis
While Table 1 maps different framings, the political effects of these framings differed. Government-aligned narratives focused on external causation, attributing the scarcity to global shocks—a claim the opposition largely did not contest. Instead, the opposition shifted the focus to internal management, questioning the government’s competence and consistency.
Because the government’s defence addressed why the shortage occurred rather than how it was being handled, it seems to have failed to neutralise criticism on its management of the fuel supply. This disconnect created a trust deficit; the public did not necessarily reject the government’s explanation of the cause, but they increasingly questioned the effectiveness of its response.
Consequently, the result was not a broad rejection of the government’s account of why the scarcity occurred, but a specific erosion of trust in its ability to manage once the issue developed, as detailed in the next section.
III. How was the government impacted?
The government was affected less by blame for causing the crisis than by a growing trust deficit in how it managed the crisis. This trust deficit developed along two linked axes: competence and credibility. Concerns about competence centred on delay, poor preparation, and weak implementation. Concerns about credibility stemmed from contradictions among the government’s earlier rhetoric and public assurances and its later actions.
Concerns about competence: The first axis of the trust deficit stemmed from a perceived lack of competence in the technical and administrative execution of the National Fuel Pass (or QR) system and, more broadly, in the government’s preparedness once the risk of disruption became apparent.
Although the administration later justified the QR system as a necessary scarcity-management tool, the opposition widely criticised its rollout as delayed and poorly executed. Despite early warnings of supply disruptions at the start of the Middle East conflict, the QR code system was not reintroduced until 15 March 2026. Critics argued that this timeline created the impression that the government acted only after the issue had become visible and difficult to contain. That impression was reinforced by technical failures during the rollout, including malfunctions at filling stations where the digital system could not process transactions. As a result, opposition voices claimed the response appeared improvised rather than prepared. This perceived “learning on the job” approach, combined with the failure of two long-term fuel tender ships to arrive on time, fueled their narrative of an administrative inability to anticipate or mitigate foreseeable logistical bottlenecks.
These developments mirrored the recognisable patterns of 2022 and were interpreted as signs of systemic state failure rather than isolated incidents. By activating this lived trauma of 2022, the government’s perceived administrative lapses were read through a lens of prior crisis memory.
Concerns about credibility: The second axis of impact lay in the contradictions between the government’s earlier political rhetoric and its conduct in office. While in opposition, the JVP had built part of its political appeal by criticising market-based pricing and “capitalist” rationing tools associated with crisis management. Yet, once in office, the government adopted the very measures it had previously opposed. This gave critics a strong basis for portraying the government’s current practice as inconsistent with its earlier political claims.
This reversal was compounded by contradictory official communication on fuel security. For weeks, senior officials and the CPC chairperson repeatedly assured the public that fuel reserves were sufficient and that prices would remain stable.
Furthermore, these assurances created a concrete, individual-level cost for those who believed them. Citizens who trusted official messaging and did not stockpile fuel were seen as having borne the “penalisation of trust,” while those who ignored those reassurances were effectively rewarded.
Taken together, these two lines of criticism did not produce broad blame against the government for the cause of the scarcity itself. Instead, they generated a narrower but more politically significant trust deficit around the government, which remained durable because it linked the government’s conduct to lived memory, visible contradiction, and the material cost of trusting official assurances.
[1] The MPA team monitored Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube using Junkipedia for the keywords oil and queues in Sinhala as well as QR, #FuelCrisis and #LKA from March 9 to March 22, 2026.
To view this week’s news summaries, please click here.
To view this week’s social media data, please click here.
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