The people don’t want a bigger Parliament

Editorial-June 13, 2015

Although the UNP and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have not succeeded in having their way in restricting membership of the next Parliament to the existing 225 MPs according to a cabinet decision taken last Friday, it will not go up to 255 as some opposition MPs including constituents of the UPFA and some minority parties wish. The compromise which President Maithripala Sirisena had succeeded in striking is a 237-strong Parliament – something the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress is not happy about having been seduced by the 255 figure that has been earlier bandied about. The president has assured that the rights of the minority communities and the small parties will be protected. Disaster Management Minister A.H.M. Fowzie was quoted in a morning newspaper yesterday saying Sirisena had told SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem that further revision would be possible later taking account of the views of the smaller parties. That is a reasonable proposition but we hope that these parties will not hold the two thirds majority gun at the head of the government to ensure a bigger Parliament than presently proposed during the committee stage proceeding of 20A.

Mr. Wickremesinghe and the UNP have understood that the thinking majority of this country does not want a larger Parliament than at present. In fact many intellectuals believe that the current legislature is too big for a country our size with a population of slightly over 20 million. There is resentment among a sizeable section of our people that the political class has been enriching itself over the years and increasing the number of MPs will certainly not pass muster in any public opinion poll. At Independence in 1948 we had a Parliament of 101 Members comprising 95 elected MPs and six nominated MPs to represent "unrepresented interests" like the disenfranchised estate Tamils of more recent Indian origin and even British interests represented once upon a time by the redoubtable Mr. Singleton-Salmon. In the early days MPs had an allowance of Rs. 600 a month, later increased to Rs. 750. They used their own cars to travel and paid for their petrol. The picture today is quite different. Apart from their number and the luxuries they enjoy in the new Parliament, the cost to the taxpayer of supporting these MPs who enjoy lavish pay, perks and pensions has increased unimaginably. None but the beneficiaries will favour increasing their number. But the need to get the two thirds majority for 20A has forced President Sirisena’s to agree to the 237-member proposal now on the table.

Judging by the pressure that is now being mounted, we do not think that even this number is ironclad. There is every possibility that the demands of practical politics will force Sirisena’s hand to up the ante to get the necessary majority. We have already seen this happening with regard to the promise of a small cabinet. The number of ministers, state ministers, deputy ministers and whoever have not yet reached the obscene proportions of the Rajapaksa era. But four new appointments made last week and the appointment of former Prime Ministers Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and D.M. Jayaratne as senior political advisors to the president is surely a writing on the wall. An educated guess will be that given their age and physical capability, they either do not want nomination to run for Parliament again although without doubt the sons will succeed the fathers. There is clearly a desire not to send the former premiers home with only their parliamentary pensions, so the resort to these newest appointment to ice their cake with the customary pay and perks at the expense of the uncomplaining taxpayer – a golden handshake no doubt.

The public certainly will not cheer. But this is the way that the game has been played for a very long time in this so-called Democratic Socialist Republic of ours. It will not be easy to break out of the habit. We live in a country where our ministers have special ceremonies at which they hand out letters of appointment to public service recruits as if the jobs come by their grace and favour. That might sometimes be the case where politicians influence selections of their supporters for positions in an already bloated public sector with no regard for merit. MPs too often regard projects under their decentralized budgets as personal bounty coming out of their own pockets. It is time that voters realize that it is their money that pays for all the goodies including the free lunches that the former president lavishly treated callers at Temple Trees in the run-up to the January 8 presidential election. Details of what was done including the distribution of sil redhi are emerging and former President CBK went public on Friday with what she’d been told about some mind boggling commission demands.

It is clear that somebody up there, for whatever reason, has become nervous about where ongoing investigations (or witch hunts as those affected brand them) is going to lead. This has resulted in the IGPs directing to the Financial Crimes Investigation Division and the CID to desist from making arrests of "a political nature." Several politicians have been/are being questioned on various matters of public concern; so does it mean they are being sent home after their statements are recorded even if there are grounds to arrest them and produce them in court? Did the IGP, who is maintaining an eloquent silence on this matter, take this decision on his own volition or was there a whisper in his ear?

Who can tell at this time when a numbers game is being played? The former president is playing coy by making fleeting appearances at some of the massive rallies the `Bring Back Mahinda’ lobby is organizing on his behalf. But he’s not mounting the stage himself and making the speeches he loves to make in various temples and other places. It is said that he’ll show up at the next rally though the public, of course, will not know whether Parliament will be dissolved by then. That scene is unfolding like an auction reaching the "going, going" stage without the hammer falling with the final "gone."