Business as usual in the House

Thursday’s farcical re-election of Ranjith Siyambalapitiya as the Deputy Speaker of the incumbent Parliament is a clear demonstration, if any is needed, that it’s business as usual in the Sri Lanka Parliament. This despite the revolutionary fervor of the people outside that first the Rajapaksas, aiya and malli, and thereafter the other clansmen must go. ITAK MP, Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, put it neatly. He said that the 65 Members who voted for Mr. Imthiaz Bakeer Markar represented the people. The 148 who voted for the eventual winner represented the Rajapaksas.

The way that papadam crumbled defies rational explanation. First, Siyambalapitiya, elected on the SLFP ticket resigned some weeks ago saying that having being elected from the blue party (which incidentally had an arrangement with the Rajapaksa pohottuwa) was resigning as his party had decided to leave the ruling group. He said that the president, no less, had refused to accept his resignation and he, in deference to this request, would stay on till May 1 when he would quit. He even said that he will not draw any of the pay and perks of his office until his eventual departure. And so it (presumably) was.

Then came his eventual departure. The ex and back-again deputy speaker then left office and the House last week solemnly set about electing his successor. But voila, who was that successor? None other than Siyambalapitiya himself, proposed by longtime minister and dyed-in-the-wool SLFPer, Nimal Siripala de Silva seconded by equally senior Susil Premajayantha aka Premajayanth. The latter, readers would remember, not long ago got shunted to the ‘B’ team after a long innings in the ‘A’ team and was sulking somewhat until he suddenly found himself sacked altogether, a fate later suffered by Weerawansa and Gammanpila, and took a three-wheeler home to don his black coat and return to practicing law.

If this was not a deal between the Rajapaksas and the SLFP, one cannot know what a deal is. So we are back to business as usual with various opportune arrangements made to suit needs of the moment. These are often accompanied by consideration, both visible and invisible as the Galle Face agitators are loudly proclaiming; and the rest of the country has long known but done nothing about until the advent of the aragalaya. How independent are the claimed “independents” who recently crossed from one side of the House to the other? Not much, the results of the deputy speaker’s election (more correctly re-election) shows.

Wimal Weerawansa, one of the more garrulous of that group was absent at the voting. He has not up to the time of writing offered an explanation of why this was so. TNA leader R. Sampanthan, is a very old man and may not have been well enough to attend. Justice Wigneswaran too has been mum on the subject and would hopefully offer and explanation sooner or later; like in the old days on the bench when judgments were reserved or delivered with a terse “reasons later.” Why three MPs spoilt their votes – how this was done was not made public – is also inexplicable. While there’s been a lot of noise in the public domain over the years that many of our MPs are uneducated or not educated enough to perform legislative and other parliamentary duties, nobody has been accused of being illiterate. All that a valid vote required was the name of the candidate of choice and the signature of the voter.

Why Siyambalapitiya’s resignation went to the president is a mystery that remains uncleared. Commonsense would dictate that it should go to the speaker. Standing Orders, we are told, has no provision as to whom a presiding member of the House, whether speaker, deputy speaker or deputy chairman of committees should tender a resignation. So Siyambalapitiya had chosen to go to the president and the speaker, apparently, had waited to hear what the outcome was before the election of a successor was taken up. Although a solemn ritual of placing a screen and a ballot box in the well of the house was conducted, and names of members were called out to vote, opposition whip Lakshman Kiriella was heard asking “where’s the secrecy when MPs must sign the ballot paper?” But that is the way Standing Orders prescribe for taking a secret ballots.

There was no response to the demand that ballot papers be immediately destroyed. Presumably they would be kept in the safe custody of the Secretary General of Parliament. But strange are the ways of our Parliament. There isn’t a trace of the impeachment motion against former President Ranasinghe Premadasa which a former speaker “entertained” and then stopped entertaining. Where it went, who signed it and who didn’t and whether it still exists will presumably remain for ever in the realm of the unknown. It also needs clarification whether an MP voting in secret has the freedom to write he/she was abstaining on the ballot paper. And if that was done were the votes deemed “spoilt?” Perhaps we’ll know in the fullness of time and will also learn the strategy underlying Thursday’s events.

That apart, this issue of our newspaper today offers readers a range of analytical commentary on the ongoing drama both at Galle Face and elsewhere. There is also a perception among television viewers that events around us are taking a new flavour to what prevailed before with the Frontline Socialist Party-aligned Inter University Students Federation adopting a more boisterous attitude than previously on view in their demonstrations. It has been previously reported that the FSP is the only political presence at Galle Face. Whether this can cause an ‘infection,’ and how all this will unravel, only time can tell.