Almost four years since emergency regulations were imposed following the assassination of former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in August 2005, the situation in the country has undergone a dramatic change with the military defeat of the LTTE. But the Government feels it is too early for the tough laws to be lifted, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake told Parliament last week.
“The disease of terrorism has been defeated, but the germs still remain,” the Prime Minister told Parliament during the debate on the extension of the emergency on Thursday. He compared the country to a person afflicted with a prolonged illness, who despite having been cured of the disease, still needed treatment to recover completely. “The emergency is needed to fully destroy the germs that spread this disease,” he said.
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Ellawala
Medananda Thera |
Ratnasiri
Wickremanayake |
Ranil Wickremesinghe |
The Prime Minister said since the defeat of the LTTE, two and half months ago, the security forces have continued to weed out some of the germs from both among the IDPs in the north as well as from Colombo.
For the opposition, a cause for concern was not the government’s right to use emergency regulations to deal with terrorists, but the manner in which the laws were being used for anti democratic purposes.
“Now that the LTTE leadership has been defeated we need to safeguard the rights of the people,” Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said. He also raised the issue of several lawyers being called traitors by the Defence Ministry official web site. “There is a systematic intimidation of lawyers. Any lawyer can appear in any case and no one can call them traitors for doing so,” he said.
The conduct of the election campaign for the local councils in Jaffna and Vavuniya by some politicians belonging to the ruling party was raised by TNA Jaffna district MP N.Srikantha who said there was a campaign to undermine democracy in the country.,
“There is gross abuse of state machinery in the election campaign. There is a move to subvert the will of the people in these areas,” MP Srikantha said. He also warned that the Jaffna and Vavuniya polls would be similar to the infamous District Development Council (DDC) elections held in Jaffna in 1981 which were heavily rigged. “The government must ensure that the polls are free and fair and must send an independent group of election monitors to ensure that it will be so,” he said.
Parliament also discussed the issue of flawed test papers that were handed over to students by the provincial educational authorities. While the opposition charged the mistakes had taken place due to carelessness and inefficiency of educational authorities, JHU MP Ellawala Medananda Thera saw a conspiracy behind the whole matter.
“There is a conspiracy to tarnish the good name of the government and divert its attention away from the important issues that it is dealing with. The recent commotion over the examination papers is one such matter,” the Thera said.
However, Education Minister Susil Premjayanth admitted there had been negligence and inefficiency on the part of the officials preparing the papers and disciplinary action would be taken against those responsible for the mistakes.
Meanwhile, UNP Colombo district MP Ravi Karunanayaka raised the issue of the reactivation of the Sri Lanka Press Council and said it had been done based on a decision taken by the Committee on Public Enterprise (COPE).
“It was based on a Cabinet decision and by stating that the decision was made by COPE, the Non Cabinet Minister of Media.
(Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena) has misled the House and the country,” Mr. Karunanayaka said.
The UNP MP tabled the verbatim report of the COPE committee proceedings in which the decision to reactivate the Press Council was taken and said it should clear the wrong perception the Government had created that the UNP supported the move. |
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