Shouting in House, Speaker suspends sittings
By Chandani Kirinde, Our Lobby Correspondent
President Mahinda Rajapakse’s maiden Budget was passed by an overwhelming majority in the House on Thursday, with the JVP taking on the role of the main critic of the Government and also playing the role of Opposition while the members of the largest Opposition party, the UNP, seemed to be suffering from the post Presidential election defeat syndrome, showing little interest in the Budget debate with very few of its MPs attending sessions and even fewer participating.

It was an unprecedented Budget. For one thing, the “Mahinda Chintanaya” based Budget was presented exactly one moth after former Finance Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama had presented a Budget to Parliament. It was also debated and passed in record time – eight days in all, with Legislators having to discuss the votes of nearly 50 Ministries as well as more than 20 other important offices including that of the President, the Prime Minister, and the Judges of the Supreme Court, in just three days.

As Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike put it, “I have been in Parliament for almost 30 years but I don’t know how to speak on 11 subjects in five minutes.” That was the kind of time constraints that many had to deal with given the short period within which the Budget had to be approved.

With the UNP abstaining, the JVP, the JHU and the SLMC supporting it, the Budget was approved with 119 members voting for and 18 against. CWC members too kept away during voting time with one of its members, Suresh Vadivel who has now joined the government supporting it. The only opponents were the TNA MPs whose main grouse against the Budget was the high allocation for defence expenditure.

It was also a tense time as Parliamentary sittings came to a close for the year with the escalation of violence in the north and Tamil legislators protesting within the Chambers at what they alleged were atrocities by the security forces against the people of Jaffna.

There was also the entry of a new MP. Ending days of speculation, Dallas Alahapperuma, was also sworn in during the week to fill the vacancy created by the death of former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar.

The JVP lead the Budget debate most of the way with several Ministers too taking time to explain how they hoped to carry forward the work in each subject allocated to them. While emphasising that Government members take their criticism as “friendly”, JVP MPs went on to accuse the Government of relegating on promises made at the Presidential election to give fertiliser are Rs. 350 per 50 kg bag, for having too big a Cabinet, for having too many Ministers with overlapping duties etc.

Much of the criticism was led by former Agriculture Minister and JVP Kurunegala district MP Anura Dissanayake who ridiculed the fact that there were four different Ministries dealing with the subject of agriculture and related subjects and that there was confusion as to who was handling which department.

“Even each of the Ministers handling the subject doesn’t know what the other is doing. This kind of uncertainty only leaves room for waste, inefficiency and corruption when dealing with an important matter such as the fertiliser subsidy,” Mr .Dissanayake said.

JVP Matale district MP Sujatha Alahakoon too aired similar views on the over lapping subjects assigned to different Ministers. “Even we don’t know which Minister is in charge of a particular subject. If we are to build a new Sri Lanka, we have to have a proper mechanism to implement the proposals contained in the Budget” she said.

Ms. Alahakoon too was critical of the large number of Ministries that had been created to please different people. “The Government now says they will provide mid-day meals to children from underprivileged schools only. But the money that is used to run a Ministry can be used for worthier causes such as to provide meals for all school children,” she added.

Chief Government Whip Jeyaraj Fernandopulle took much of the JVP criticism in good sprit saying it was beneficial to have someone pointing out their shortcomings so that they could be corrected and in fact thanked the JVP for doing the job of the real opposition. Mr. Fernandopulle also came down hard on some sections of the Catholic Church for taking sides in the recent Presidential poll and said this had caused unnecessary divisions among villagers in the predominately Catholic areas of the country.

“The Church does not involve itself in politics unlike the Buddhist clergy. But unfortunately this time, due to various pressures from businessmen and certain UNP politicians, they too got involved and even during church sermons asked people not to vote for President Rajapakse,” he said.However, he said the UPFA had in fact increased its vote base by over 36,000 since the 2004 General Elections in the Christian areas as people had accepted the Mahinda Chintanaya and not believed that he was anti-Christian or anti-peace.

For the TNA, the main worry was the peace process and the escalating violence in the north and the east. The party’s Parliamentary Group Leader R. Sampanthan said they wanted the peace process to succeed and it mattered little whether this was achieved under the UNP leader or the UPFA leader.

“We are prepared to extend our support to a meaningfully structured peace process,” he said and welcomed the change in the stance of certain political parties who were at one time calling the Norwegians “white tigers” and have now accept them as facilitator of the peace process. Even though Mr. Sampanthan spoke in this conciliatory manner on Wednesday, on Tuesday morning, TNA MPs brought sittings in the House to a stop for at least half an hour forcing Speaker W.J.M. Lokubandara to suspend sittings as the MPs protested loudly accusing the Army of attacking civilians in Jaffna.

The shouting match began soon after Mr. Sampanthan made a statement on the attacks on some Jaffna university academics as well as on the rape of a girl allegedly by some Navy personnel. Following the statement, the TNA MPs marched to the Well of the House shouting slogans. Government, JHU and JVP MPs too joined in the shouting forcing the Speaker to suspend sittings.

Prime Minister and Deputy Defence Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, responding to Mr. Sampanthan later in the day, said the President has called for a report on the rape incident and had also appointed a retired Supreme Court judge and a retired diplomat to inquire into the incident. The Government had allocated two hours for the debate on the emergency for Wednesday evening, but by 5.30 pm, none of the TNA MPs who had requested the debate were present in the House. Seizing the chance, Minister Wickremanayake moved the motion promulgating emergency rule for another month and got it approved by the House. Ironically, the TNA MPs were at the time meeting President Mahinda Rajapakse to bring to his attention their concerns regarding the tense situation in Jaffna.

Several Government Ministers, MPs and TNA MPs unaware that the House had been adjourned early turned up in Parliament past 7.00 pm, thinking a vote would be taken on the motion only to find the House deserted.
The role of the Constitutional Council was another subject that came under scrutiny by several Government speakers. Leader of the House Nimal Siripala de Silva expressed dissatisfaction in the manner in which the Council and the other independent commission had operated. “There are several shortcomings in the 17th Amendment to the Constitution and we must discuss this and rectify the shortcomings,” he said.

Constitutional Reforms and National Integration Minister D.E.W. Gunasekera too said that amendments will have to be brought to Parliament soon if people were to benefit from the independent commissions which have run into political deadlock because of the existing system. Another issue Mr. Gunasekera addressed was the failure to properly implement Tamil as the official language due to the lack of Tamil speaking persons. He said of around 800,000 public servants, at least 300,000 will have to know both the languages if the policy was to be implemented properly.

However there were only around 160 translators in the public service and so there was a dire need for a language training centre to increase these numbers. Chief Opposition Whip Mahinda Samarasinghe spoke positively of the “Mahinda Chintanaya” and he stressed the need for a bi-partisan approach to settle the country’s national problems. “There are 153 members in Opposition now and so the need for consensus is greater,” he said.


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