Ranil wants standing orders amended-Impeachment Motions

November 19, 2012, 10:25 pm 

By Saman Indrajith

Parliamentary Standing Orders pertaining to impeachment motions were outdated and should be amended to ensure that justice prevailed, Opposition and UNP Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe told Parliament yesterday.

Participating in the third reading stage debate on Budget 2013, Wickremesinghe said that the Sri Lankan Parliament had to take examples in this regard from other Commonwealth countries, such as India and Australia. "We must invite three experts from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to visit Sri Lanka and recommend necessary amendments to the Standing Orders," he said.

The House had powers of both the legislature and the judiciary, he said adding that those responsible for the attack on Judicial Service Commission Secretary Manjula

Tillekeratne had not been brought to book. If there was a serious and genuine need to arrest the culprits, they could have been brought to justice, the Opposition Leader said, adding that the attackers were still at large.

Those responsible for the attack on the UNP Party Headquarters, Sirikotha, arrested and produced before the Courts had been later released, Wickremesinghe said.

The UNP leader said that it was not wise to have a crisis situation between the judiciary and the legislature. The two institutions of democracy should operate with a mutual understanding of each other. "None of us need to influence or involve in the process of the judiciary. These three institutions must coexist without influencing each other".

"We are duty bound to safeguard the judiciary but we are not here to protect individuals; we fight for what is right and not for who is right,"he said.