Monday 25th November, 2024

Jaffna District Independent MP Dr. Archuuna Ramanathan has drawn heavy flak for his unparliamentary conduct during the inaugural session of the 10th Parliament last week. He occupied the Opposition Leader’s seat improperly, and resisted a parliamentary worker’s efforts to persuade him to leave it; he declared that he was no respecter of parliamentary traditions. He went so far as to post a video of the incident on social media. The word, ‘Eelam’, he used to give his propaganda stunt a separatist zing, has prompted some civil society groups to call for legal action against him. They are sure to milk the issue dry.

MP Ramanathan has provided a rallying point to some nationalistic groups that are reeling from their humiliating electoral defeats and desperately looking for something to hold on to.

Facing a combative television interview subsequently, MP Ramanathan made a very serious allegation against the Sri Lanka army. He said the army was shielding the much-dreaded Ava group, which terrorises the people in the North. The police must probe this allegation forthwith. The burden of proof is on MP Ramanathan, who should cooperate fully with the police. However, he is not alone in having made such unsubstantiated allegations against the Sri Lankan military. Most TNA MPs did so in Parliament itself as well as elsewhere to the extent of influencing the UNHRC.

MP Ramanthan is also under fire for having praised the slain LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran to high heaven. He in fact deified Prabhakaran. Only hypocrisy of the highest order can drive a person to champion democracy while commemorating those who resorted to savage terror to deprive the people of their democratic rights and destroy tens of thousands of lives and properties worth billions of rupees in the name of some macabre causes.

However, Prabhakaran is not the only dead terror leader who is commemorated. This year’s commemoration of the JVP founder, Rohana Wijeweeera, and other slain party cadres took place the other day. Strangely, there is no one to commemorate the thousands of victims of LTTE and JVP terror!

Prabhakaran and Wijeweera were poles apart anent their ideologies and goals, but their modus operandi was more or less the same—unleashing barbaric terror. So, the argument that it is nothing but duplicitous to allow the commemoration of Wijeweera and ban that of Prabhakaran is not without merit. Terrorism is no means to an end; it is the end and means both, and must therefore be condemned and defeated in all its forms and manifestations.

What MP Ramanathan did during the inauguration of the current Parliament was reprehensible, but one can argue that it pales into insignificance in comparison to what we witnessed during the 52-day government in late 2018, when a group of UPFA MPs loyal to the Rajapaksa family went berserk, unable to muster a parliamentary majority to retain their unconstitutionally-gained hold on power. They even tried to harm the then Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, who did not give in to their terror tactics; one of the protesting UPFA MPs even sat on the Speaker’s chair, which was later toppled; the protesters damaged furniture and microphones in the House, hurled books and water mixed with chilli powder at their opponents and threw chairs at the police personnel, who were called in to protect the Speaker.

The culprits were seen in a live telecast of the stormy session, and a complaint was lodged with the police against them, but they were not prosecuted. Efforts by the media, civil organisations and concerned citizens to have those rowdies face the full force of the law were in vain; the Yahapalana government opted to soft-pedal the issue, after the UNP regained control of Parliament, and the culprits received only a rap on the knuckles. Parliament and political leaders thus created an extremely bad precedent, and it is only natural that the people have lost trust in Parliament, and the JVP almost succeeded in leading a mob to march on it in 2022.

Besides, in previous parliaments, brawls where thugs in the garb of MPs resorted to fisticuffs and traded raw filth were frequent, and they prompted the Speakers to remove schoolchildren from the public gallery.

It is up to Parliament to decide how to handle the issue of MP Ramanthan’s unparliamentary conduct at issue, but the task of restoring the dignity of the legislature requires much more than disciplinary action against one or two MPs. The swamp has to be drained once and for all.

Thankfully, most of those who brought Parliament into disrepute have lost their seats, but the problem is that when power goes to politicians’ heads, they take leave of their senses; whether the new MPs will succumb to the arrogance of power or be guided by their collective moral ‘compass’ remains to be seen.