UNPROFESSIONALISM INTERRUPTED

The extreme lack of decorum in parliament is making headline news!

Parliament went into recess when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa prorogued proceedings for a number of weeks late in December – and it reconvened with a loud bang on 18 January when the now familiar misconduct among our lawmakers (would you believe!) didn’t fall on deaf ears.

First, none other than Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena lamented the lack of professionalism among MPs and went further by adding that their conduct was a cause for embarrassment. What’s more, he remarked that their lack of seriousness about their work as the lawmakers of the nation was also a shame.

“Today, very few members [of parliament] who prepare for their speeches in advance refer to the library or speak facts,” he charged, noting that only 330 books were borrowed from the parliament’s library by the 225 MPs… and would you believe, 122 (that’s more than a third of the sum!) were works of fiction!

No wonder the story of our land in the sun is being written by our masters like a work of fiction – one that reads like a horror story far from the sun.

Former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe threw his hat into the calamitous ring and caused a calamity when he proposed that ministers be subject to a ‘code of conduct’ so as to ensure decorum in the house.

The leader of the United National Party (UNP) – who happens to be the sole sitting UNP MP today – said that “parliament should play a key role in steering the country in the correct path when it is grappling with one of the biggest financial crises…”

While it is encouraging to learn that a handful of senior parliamentarians are at long last acknowledging what has been obvious for many years and speaking out about the shameless lack of decorum – and calibre, one is inclined to add – the reality could well be that little will change unless the people take matters into their own hands when they next cast their vote at an election.

This country isn’t being run to the ground because of COVID-19 or anything else for that matter; it is where it is because the people have continued to tick the wrong boxes on the ballot paper – and as is widely believed, because they’re compelled to vote for the better of two or more evils.

If this mindset doesn’t change and the status quo prevails, the hope that many of us live in will be all but lost.

– Editor-in-Chief