Parliament

Mediation board lessens burden on court, says Jeyaraj
By Chandani Kirinde, Our Lobby Correspondent
With most MPs out campaigning for the upcoming presidential polls, there was poor attendance in Parliament last week but the all important Appropriation Bill -- setting out government expenditure for the coming year -- was presented to the House.

Parliament unanimously approved the regulation for reducing the age requirement for issuing National Identity Cards from 18 to 16 years and several other financial regulations as well.

But two important Bills which were scheduled for debate had to be postponed after the MPs requested for more time to study the Bills.
The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and the Penal Code, dealing with crimes against children including recruitment of children for armed conflict, were to be debated on Wednesday but Chief Government Whip Jeyaraj Fernandopulle informed the House that these Bills would be taken up for debate on a later date considering the requests made by several MPs.

The only Bill to be approved was the Commercial Mediation Centre of Sri Lanka (Amendment) Bill which seeks to encourage people to resort to mediation before going for litigation.

It was during the course of this debate that the atmosphere in the House turned highly volatile after UNP Gampaha district MP John Amaratunga brought up an issue which was in no way connected to the Bill under consideration.

JHU MP Uduwe Dhammaloka Thero was occupying the Speaker’s chair at the time when Mr. Amaratunga informed the House about a writ application filed in the Supreme Court against a JVP legislator alleging that the petitioner had been threatened and that this particular MP should be arrested.

Mr.Amaratunga proceeded to read the entire petition amidst disturbances and disruptions from the few JVP MPs present and when it was the turn of Chief Government Whip Jeyaraj Fernandopulle to speak, he too retorted by recalling the state sponsored terrorism of the 1988/89 era, the Batalanda torture house and raked up other incidents which must have brought back unpleasant memories for many UNPers.

The fierce exchange of words between Mr. Fernandopulle and Mr. Amaratunga was finally brought to an end with Ven. Dhammaloka Thera intervening from the Chair asked them to get back to the main subject being debated. Earlier UNP MP G.L. Peries said it was doubtful if mediation has helped reduce the number of litigants in the country.

“The idea behind mediation is to get speedy relief and not having to spend money on litigation, but have any of these objectives been achieved”, he asked.

However Mr. Fernandopulle responding said the introduction of mediation boards has after all helped settle most cases before reaching Courts.
He said it was because of the mediation process that some 60 per cent of the cases had not ended up in courts.

Chief Opposition Whip Mahinda Samarasinghe described the reduction of the age limit for issuing NICs, as a progressive measure but cautioned that this would put more pressure on the Registration of Persons’ Department.
He said that with the department’s limited resources it was already stretched to the limit after the passage of the Bill last year making NICs compulsory for future elections.

Mr. Samarasinghe said some 30 per cent of eligible voters or 3.8 million did not possess NICs and the Department had to issue IDs to them as well.
“With the new regulations coming into force, this number would increase further”, he added.

Mr. Samarasinghe requested the government to provide better facilities to the department to help expedite its work.

Back to Columns