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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