Sri Lanka does not need National List MPs
If elections are held to enable eligible voters to vote for people as their choice to lead the country, there is no requirement to have another list of people entering Parliament from the backdoor. More often than not these backdoor national list entrants end up getting strategic and important portfolios and behave as if they have come with a mandate when they can’t find 100 people to vote for them!
The media has announced that the President-installed Government had deliberated that Parliamentary seats remain 225 out of which
- 125 MPs are to be elected under the first past the post system
- 75 MPs under district PR
- 25 MPs under the National List
The current Parliament comprises 225 members 196 elected directly from 24 districts while 29 enter Parliament from the National List which is in other words from the back door.
The excuse used originally in promoting the national list MPs was to enable professionals, academics and eminent persons to enter Parliament. Over the years the national list has been hijacked into bringing people representing fundamentalist religious cults supporting foreign-backed agendas and gaining strategic portfolios in legislature and in the Cabinet.
Given that the expertise and advice of professionals and academics should be tapped it is best to co-op them into a case by case need basis drawing them to committee stages of decision making instead of making them MPs. Professionals and academics do not need to be turned into politicians.
When people enter Parliament as National List MPs they are not exercising the will of the people nor do they know the will of the people or even care. Thus, inclusion of 29 such people from the backdoor is an affront to the democratic rights of the voters.
Over the years the National List MPs have included dubious characters:
- M Abraham Sumanthiran (TNA)
- Eran Wickremaratne (UNP)
- Rajiva Wijesinghe (UPFA)
- Anura Kumara Dissanayake (JVP)
- John Amaratunga (UNP)
- G L Pieris (UPFA)
- Tissa Attanayake (UNP)
- Joseph Michael Perera (UNP)
- Harsha de Silva (UNP)
- Anoma Gamage (UNP)
- Hasan Ali (UNP)
- DEW Gunasekera (UPFA)
- Tissa Vitharne (UPFA)
- A H M Azwer (UPFA)
- Malini Fonseka (UPFA)
- Rajitha Senaratne
- Sarath Amunugama
- Even Mervyn Silva was one time a national list nominee
Coming from the backdoor these names have yielded power over the people without the people’s mandate and there are no checks and balances because they are not accountable to the public therefore they only wish to promote their personal ideologies and those that they are funded to promote!
If we are a nation upholding parliamentary democracy governance cannot betray the sovereign rights of the people and the people are the voters. The fundamental exercise of voting and electing leaders is breached in allowing people to creep in through the back door and handing them strategic portfolios as well.
Ideally the National List provision should be abolished in toto keeping only to election of MPs by the vote.
However, if selection of MPs by National List is to continue it must be assured that no strategic position at cabinet level be given to these MPs especially mono-ethnic political parties which are not representative of all the communities of Sri Lanka.
The National List is a travesty of the universal franchise of the voters of Sri Lanka. This is an undemocratic feature and should ideally be abolished.
Shenali D Waduge
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