If you want to search for bad precedents, both from your own parliament and even outside, as our suave and able foreign minister did not so very long ago to justify (in a sense) the rambunctious events in Sri Lanka’s incumbent legislature, the researcher’s task will not be difficult. The issue is not "what you did, I can do better," but how to improve ourselves leaving unsavory events of the past behind and ensure that standards are improved rather than further debased. That, clearly, is not what our parliamentarians intend doing judging by what the chief government whip, Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, declared in the House last week. He said the government plans not to answer questions from UNP MP T. Maheswaran "until he improves his conduct and abides by the standing orders of parliament."

It is for the Speaker and not anybody else in parliament to ensure that standing orders are not violated. Nevertheless, Fernandopulle remembered that former Foreign Minister Ranjan Wijeratne had refused to answer their questions in the 1989-90 period. It was very much in character for Wijeratne, a feisty, straightforward, no-nonsense personality who had done this country proud as the political boss of the armed services and police at a time Sri Lanka was on the brink of anarchy to adopt that kind of hard line if he deemed fit. That was a time when the JVP’s second insurrection was raging in the south while the LTTE was doing its thing in the north. We don’t know what questions Wijeratne refused to answer although we do know that Fernandopulle is dead right that this was exactly what happened. Be that as it may, the current tack will not be good for our parliament or the country. It is an open question whether Speaker Lokubandara, also targeted by the government, will be able to do what he should in these circumstances given the current line-up and the way events are unfolding.

Standing Orders clearly stipulate norms of conduct and it is not permitted for MPs to criticize the conduct of certain protected persons including the president and judges. In fact, it is not possible for an MP to even question the conduct of a fellow-member without a substantive motion. These are all useful protective devices to ensure that larger interests are protected from the hurly burly of everyday politics or even the personal peccadilloes or enmities of individual MPs. They have been tried and tested not only in our own parliament but also elsewhere including, most notably, in the Mother of Parliaments that has given legislatures of former British colonies and others many fine traditions to follow. So if Mr. Maheswaran chooses to attack the president violating standing orders, it is for the Speaker to act as he has. He must try to stop him and if he persists, expunge anything offensive from the parliamentary record as, we believe, Lokubandara has done. There is also the other remedy of "naming" the offender or as it is quaintly termed, "suspending the honourable member (who is named) from the services of the House" for a specified period of time.

Members of the Bandaranaike family per se cannot be similarly protected from attacks in parliament unless they in their own right, like the president or Mr. Anura Bandaranaike who is a sitting MP, qualify for such protection. So whether it is Maheswaran or Raviraj, they can have their say, however distasteful it may be, without breaking the rules. Others can respond as Mr. Anura Bandaranaike did last week to the diatribe under reference which was labelled by Bandaranaike as, among others, "palpably false, venomous, mischievous etc." Whether the Fernandopulle strategy of not answering Maheswaran’s questions will stand remains to be seen. He’s asked for three months to answer the last lot and, as has been done on other occasions, can continue to ask for more time and can adopt this procedure ad infinitum. Maheswaran too can resort to the device of getting somebody else who has not been blackballed to ask his questions. There are many ways of skinning a cat, as they say.