The news that a parliamentary select committee has recommended that urgent action be taken to protect parliament against rising water levels of the Diayawanna Oya seems to have disturbed the public, as could be seen from the various suggestions from our readers. One of them has proposed that parliament be shifted to Waters Edge!

Perhaps, given the state of national politics and the track record of politicians, the ideal location for parliament is Waters Edge, which has become a metaphor for illegality, cronyism and abuse of power.

What is surprising is not that parliament has been threatened by floods but that politicians took so long to realise the danger. Senior Engineer Anton Nanayakkara was the first expert to question, through the pages of this newspaper, President J. R. Jayewardene's wisdom of having chosen that location. He predicted Parliament would be affected by floods and his prediction came true years ago.

This country is blessed with omniscient politicians with massive egos, who implement grandiose projects which remind us of these lines by Shelley:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Expert opinion matters very little to them. They go ahead with their pet projects to build political dams etc wasting colossal amounts of public funds.

Presidents of this country seem to have a peculiar predilection for slough. President JRJ built a parliament on a marsh to boost his ego. President Ranasinghe Premadasa constructed a cricket stadium on a swamp to perpetuate his name. (It was named after him.) President Chandrika Kumaratunga gave a fenland to one of her cronies to build a hotel and a golf course. A wag says politicians may be fond of marshes because they cannot resist temptation to wallow in mud. God knows what President Mahinda Rajapaksa's plans for the country's marshes are!

Parliament, one may argue, began to sink the day the Executive Presidency was created. The presidency with most of the state powers concentrated in it has proved to be too heavy for the national legislature to bear. The all powerful Executive has reduced parliament to a mere appendage. The legislature snaps back into its pristine position only when the executive president's party loses a general election like in 1994 and 2001. Parliament will continue to 'sink' unless and until the powers of the presidency are curtailed and the head of the State is made answerable to it.

Efforts to protect parliamentary buildings will be in vain unless steps are taken to arrest the deterioration of the national legislature. Saving physical structures from floods is not a difficult task in this space age. A team of engineering experts may attend to that. But, no one will be able to salvage an institution if it is allowed to deteriorate beyond redemption.

Parliament has come to such a pass that the Speaker lamented during the last budget vote, when MPs resorted to fisticuffs and ran away with some vital documents, that he had experienced terrorism in the House. A few years ago, some schoolchildren watching parliamentary proceedings from the public gallery broke down when their representatives suddenly pounced on one another hurling abuse and exchanging blows. MP monks had a nasty experience at the hands of a lay counterpart who hit one of them in the genitals with a mobile phone. Debating standards have fallen by the wayside. Intellectual thrust and parry are things of the past. Sadly, abuse and blows have replaced them.

The problem of floods threatening parliament should, no doubt, be tackled urgently. But, we must not lose sight of graver threats from within. There is a campaign to clip the Executive President's wings. One cannot but endorse reducing the powers of the presidency or scrapping that institution. There is a call for stripping the president of his legal immunity. But, some parliamentarians have become a law unto themselves. They are no respecters of the country's basic law which they continue to flout contemptuously with impunity.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution states, "No person shall, directly or indirectly, in or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote, finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka ... No political party or other association or organisation shall have as one of its aims or objects the establishment of a separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka." But, it looks as if the TNA were not required to abide by this. It openly supports the LTTE which is all out to carve out a separate state. When TNA MPs die, their remains are removed to the LTTE-held areas and their coffins draped with the LTTE flag. That alone is sufficient proof of their links with the terrorists. They are also abusing their privileged positions to carry out LTTE propaganda overseas. Recently some of them were in India to fuel the anti-Sri Lankan flames in Tamil Nadu. But, no one has made an issue of this blatant violation of the Constitution. Why?

The appointment of a parliamentary select committee to save parliament from floods was a step in the right direction. But, why haven't parliamentarians made a similar effort to save the country from the tsunami of terrorism? It is time they put up a united front against the terrorists and other enemies of the State.