Port City Bill: Kiriella questions bona fides of govt.

By Saman Indrajith

Chief Opposition Whip and SJB Kandy District MP Lakshman Kiriella yesterday questioned the bona fides of the government with regard to the Colombo Port Economic Commission Bill.

Addressing the media at the Opposition Leader’s office in Colombo, MP Kiriella said that the government had been in a mighty hurry to present the Bill to Parliament on April 08. “I was in the Chamber in the evening of April 08. The government did not inform the party leaders’ meeting held the week before that it would present such a bill. The timing of the presenting of the bill too raises doubts. It seems that the government wanted to block the process of challenging the bill in the Supreme for its constitutionality. It was presented to the House while the country was getting ready to celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. With the intervening weekend and public holidays had just two working days to retain lawyers, many of whom were on vacation, and file applications challenging the constitutionality of the Bill in the Supreme Court within the one-week period stipulated in the Constitution. The intentions of the government with regard to the bill are crooked and not genuine right from the beginning because they knew that they were doing something wrong,” Kiriella said.

The Kandy District MP challenged the Government to bring about four changes to the draft Bill if the latter was truly genuine in its intentions with regard to the Bill. “We propose to bring about a clause or section to the draft Bill making it answerable to Parliament. So that parliament’s supremacy over public finances would be guaranteed and the parliamentary committees such as Committee on Public Enterprises and Committee on Public Accounts would be able to oversee the proposed Colombo Port Economic Commission. In addition, it should be made compulsory for the CPEC to submit their annual reports on finances and performance to Parliament. Third proposal is that a clause should be introduced to the draft bill without any uncertain terms preventing money-laundering in the Port City area. Fourth, a section or clause should be inserted among the provisions of the draft bill preventing the inflow of funds from terrorist activities to the port city,” MP Kiriella said.