Saturday 11th May, 2024

Now that Diana Gamage has lost her parliamentary seat owing to a Supreme Court ruling that she is not eligible to be a member of Parliament, a campaign has got underway to have state funds spent on her as an MP and State Minister recovered from her. The fact that she, a British citizen, had herself appointed a National List (NL) MP and held a ministerial post amounts to deception, according to her critics. This argument is tenable.

Ironically, among those who are all out to have ex-MP Gamage pay back taxpayers’ money spent on her for nearly four years are some SJB MPs, who have taken the moral high ground and are condemning her. The SJB leaders are deriving some perverse pleasure from Gamage’s predicament and are twisting the knife, so to speak. However, there is no way the SJB can absolve itself of the blame for Diana’s appointment to Parliament.

Those who formed the SJB, after leaving the UNP, struck a deal with Gamage and took over her party prior to the last general election. They made Gamage one of their NL nominees and subsequently appointed her to Parliament as part of their deal with her. The holier-than-thou SJB MPs had no issue with her NL nomination or her appointment to Parliament. They would not have been out for her scalp if she had not defected to the government. They claim to be privy to the government’s inner workings, Cabinet secrets, and clandestine deals the ruling party politicians cut. The SJB, therefore, cannot claim that it was not aware of Gamage’s British citizenship when it made her one of its NL nominees. The SJB leaders, in our book, are as culpable as Gamage on this score.

We believe that the SJB has a moral obligation to pay back 33.3% of the state funds spent on its NL MP Gamage and tender an apology to the public, whose franchise it violated with her appointment to Parliament.

The Rajapaksa government engineered Gamage’s crossover, and rewarded her with a ministerial post. Having benefited from Diana’s defection and caused a loss to the public purse, the government is duty bound to pay back 33.3% percent of the taxpayers’ money spent on her. One may recall that it went out of its way to suppress evidence against her to the point of making one wonder whether anything would come of the investigations into her citizenship issue. Thankfully, it failed in its endeavour.

Gamage, who had herself appointed to Parliament, in spite of being aware of her disqualification, ought to pay back the remaining 33.3% of the state funds spent on her. It may not be fair to make her pay the entire amount.

It is believed that there are several dual citizens in the current Parliament, drawing salaries and enjoying various perks at the expense of the public. The Department of Immigration and Emigration must be made to reveal information about the citizenship status of every MP. It is incumbent upon the party leaders to ensure that their MPs are not either foreign citizens or dual citizens. Opinion is divided on whether dual citizens should be allowed to be MPs, as we pointed out in a previous comment, but the lawmakers must abide by the provisions of the existing Constitution. The need for a new law to make it a punishable offence for anyone disqualified by the Constitution to enter Parliament cannot be overemphasised.