Top of the pops at Diyawanna talk shop
File picture of a the fracas that broke out at Parliament some months ago.
What next? We are obsessed with rankings. There is a gnawing hunger to find out who is the best in everything, from the music industry to sports, from top-10 hotels to the best universities. From American Idol to the ICC’s unfathomable Test and One-Day International rankings we have our fill of dedicated listings. Now add to all this Sri Lanka’s hot list of who is the ‘best’ parliamentarian. And instead of Simon Cowell, we have Manthri.lk, a website which is as entertaining – if it is your bent in finding out which honourable member at the Diyawanna talk shop is top of the pops.
Unlike a beauty pageant, Sri Lanka’s pioneering Parliamentary-monitoring platform judges MPs not on their looks, thankfully, but on their performance both in the main chamber of the House as well as in consultative committees – the scorecard compiled from a minute dissection of the Hansard as well as the minutes of the committee meetings. “Manthri.lk is a site which measures and ranks Parliamentarians and makes a judgement on their performance,’ is the succinct summation by Nishan de Mel, Executive Director of Verite Reseach. The Colombo think-tank launched the website in August 2013 with the specific goal of lifting the impenetrable veil on what our lawmakers are up to after they get elected to Parliament.
Hansard record
Dr. De Mel ticks off the three main aspects: “Information, visibility and answerability. When we elect people to Parliament, it is an awesome responsibility they carry. The Hansard (records in verbatim) what every MP says in the chamber but it is difficult information to process and what we do is dissect this information and put it across in a manner which is easy to understand. “This information is brought together on our platform and it creates visibility, and an understanding whereby we can put forward questions to our MPs as to why you are not doing better.”
Let’s cut to the chase – the top-ranked MP is Anura Kumara Dissanayake (Colombo District) with fellow-JVP Sunil Handunetti (national list) in second place. It perhaps is no surprise that JVP hogs the limelight with three of their ilk in the top five – Nalinda Jayathissa (Kalutara District) in fifth place.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe (Colombo) and his UNP party colleague Buddhika Pathirana (Matara) are fourth and third, respectively.
Other notable names on the top-20 list are Ravi Karunanayake (7th), Vasudeva Nanayakkara (16th), Sajith Premadasa (18th) and Patali Champaka Ranawake (20th). Manthri.lk failed to reveal who were the worst-performing MPs at the launch of the rankings for the 8th Parliament of Sri Lanka at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute auditorium last Thursday. Janeen Fernando, Head of Politics at Verite Research, did throw some light on the goings-on in the House, however. While stressing that Manthri.lk was not focused on finding out who is number one or two but more about being a tool to recall parliamentary contributions filtered by MP and topics, Mr. Fernando did have a few interesting numbers up his sleeve.
Fantastic Five
“The 8th Parliament of Sri Lanka has been in place less than a year and in this time 101 MPs have filed petitions on behalf of their constituents; 45 MPs have asked at least one written question; 214 MPs have participated at least once in a debate; 11 have not; five have not participated in anything yet.” The Fantastic Five were kept under wraps. The juiciest piece of information at the launch came courtesy of Buddhika Pathirana (ranked 3), one of four MPs who were on the panel discussion – Sunil Handunetti (2nd), SLFPs Bandula Gunewardhane (12th) and TNA’s M.A Sumanthiran (13th) being the others. Dr. Pathirana revealed that the quality of his peers was not something to crow about when answering a question from the audience as to whether a minimum level of education was needed to become a Member of Parliament.
“A total of 142 of the 225 MPs do not have A-level qualifications, and 94 have not even taken their GCE O-Level examinations. You shouldn’t be a graduate to qualify to be a MP but there should be a minimum qualification,” Dr. Pathirana agreed. SLFP’s Colombo District MP Gunewardhane concurred that the quality of representation in Parliament could improve. He said: “Parliament has to be a place where meaningful debate takes place. We need educated people. In the old days teachers told students to study the Hansard or to go to Parliament and listen to debates if they wanted to learn. That is not the case now with debates of low quality.”
Pugilistic skills
But at least more MPs have a voice now – in the previous Parliament five MPs accounted for two-thirds of all questions raised in the chamber. This freedom of expression is also underlined by the fact that in the 18 months of the Sirisena presidency there have been five no-confidence motions (the Minister of Finance accounting for two) when compared to three in the nine years of the Rajapaksa presidency. Apart from providing a ranking, Manthri.lk, which is a trilingual platform, also gives analysis on key parliamentary topics, gives regular updates on activity such as order papers, Bills and written questions and also provides video footage from sessions.
The last word must go to the laidback TNA member Mr. Sumanthiran who agreed that greater visibility would make Parliament more productive.
“I remember when they started live broadcasts of Parliament. The first hour would be live and when some member tried to be disruptive and misbehaved, their friends would warn them to be careful as the proceedings were ‘live yanawa’. More visibility is a good check and it helps get things done as everyone is conscious that the constituency was watching them.” Manthri.lk increases this visibility. What next? Perhaps a ranking on the pugilistic skills of the MPs!