Monday 23rd October, 2023

Parliament, more often than not, is in the news for the wrong reasons thanks to some bad eggs in the garb of people’s representatives. It looks as if their mission in life were to bring the national legislature into disrepute.

On Thursday, a group of schoolchildren left the public gallery of Parliament when some Opposition MPs went berserk and invaded the well of the chamber, compelling Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to suspend one of them for four weeks. It is advisable for teachers to refrain from taking their students to the parliamentary gallery while the House is in session.

When teachers introduce children to new environments even temporarily, they should be mindful of the moral of the Sattigumba Jataka, which is about two baby parrots blown away by a whirlwind; one lands in a hermitage and grows up to be kind and helpful, and the other finds itself in a village of thieves and becomes evil.

On Friday, the reputation of Parliament hit a new low. State Minister Diana Gamage had herself rushed to hospital, claiming that one of her male counterparts had assaulted her near the parliamentary chamber. (She was discharged several hours later.) Both she and her alleged assailant are playing victim and calling for legal and disciplinary action against each other. A viral video shows the duo clashing; and one hears them letting out streams of invectives, and it will not be difficult to ascertain what really happened there with the help of this video footage. Such reprehensible scenes are akin to fish market brawls and exemplify the old adage, ‘a fish rots from the head down’. When the national legislature is plagued by indiscipline, intolerance of dissent, misogyny, violence and dereliction of duty, how could other public institutions be expected to uphold discipline, efficiency, tolerance, gender equality, etc.? There is absolutely no way the political party leaders could absolve themselves of the blame for this sorry state of affairs; they have not cared to keep the unruly members of their parliamentary groups on a tight leash.

The rapid deterioration of the institutional integrity of Parliament, and the visible ebbing of public trust in the legislative branch of government have come as no surprise. This is something to be expected when the ill-behaved legislators’ audacious transgressions go unpunished. There have been far worse incidents in Parliament than what we witnessed on Friday, but the culprits received kid-glove treatment on all occasions.

When a group of UPFA MPs went berserk in Parliament, unable to muster a working majority following their abortive attempt to grab power in 2018, all those who cherish parliamentary democracy called for deterrent action against them. The violent MPs went to the extent of throwing chilli powder at their rivals, and even lunged towards the then Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, prompting the police to whisk him away to safety. They committed a non-bailable offence by damaging desks, chairs and microphones in the parliamentary chamber. They should have been arrested, remanded and prosecuted under the Offences against Public Property Act besides being made to face stringent disciplinary action. The police should have been entrusted with the task of dealing with the culprits according to the law, but an ad hoc parliamentary committee was set up instead, and they were let off the hook. Most of those shameless characters are in the incumbent government. Their political opponents who condemned rowdyism in the House and took the moral high ground, in 2018, are currently in the Opposition drawing heavy flak for tarnishing the image of Parliament further.

Both the government and the Opposition had better take cognisance of surging public anger, which is like a river in spate about to burst its banks. There seems to be no end in sight to the government heaping unbearable economic burdens on the people, the latest being the third power tariff hike so far this year. Professionals are leaving the country in droves owing to huge tax increases that have aggravated their financial woes. The people are struggling to dull the pangs of hunger. No wonder the number of protesters who wear Guy Fawkes masks is on the rise; they are demanding that all 225 MPs go home. Such is the antipathy of the irate public towards the political establishment, and the government and the Opposition ought to stop testing the people’s patience, which is wearing thin, and learn from last year’s political upheavals.