Daily News Editorial

Crossovers at crossroads?

19 December 2016

Reported moves to annul crossovers in parliament no doubt will be welcomed by all right thing people in this country who yearn for a decent political culture. According to a news report in our weekend publication the Sunday Observer, Constitutional Council members are currently debating the possibility of annulling the parliamentary seats of crossovers and holding a by election, in order to discourage unethical crossovers. This no doubt will be a deterrent to those who cross over for personnel gain. In any event there have been public suggestions to the Lal Wijenaike Commission in favour of by elections. Hence it is hoped that the proposed new constitution will incorporate this feature in the election laws.

The Observer report also states that even the legislators were strongly in favour of introducing provisions in the new constitution to discourage crossovers between political parties after elections. It was also pointed out that laws outlawing crossovers were still there, as applied in the instance of Lalith, Gamini duo who lost their seats following their decision to quit the Premadasa government.

But since then, the practise has been for the renegades to obtain restraining orders from the District Courts to stay their expulsion, which process could even outlast their parliament tenure, with the MPs concerned filing for extensions of the Stay Orders. Hence something drastic needs to be done to stop MPs taking their electors for a jolly ride after entering parliament to represent their very interest. What has been happening all along is the MPs looking after their own interest instead.

Sri Lanka's legislature has a long history of crossovers. SWRD set the ball rolling when he together with a few others in the D.S. Senanayake government crossed the floor of the House, ostensibly to take up cudgels on behalf of the majority Sinhala Buddhists of the country. Hence the crossover was deemed to promote a cause, and a noble one at that. Therefore there was hardly any talk of this been an unethical crossover, at least from the point of view of the majority, though it was debatable if the whole affair was grounded on altruism. In any event, that crossover was subsequently justified by many due to the social revolution it ushered in this country.

However since then, the crossovers that took place were hardly motivated by the kind of altruism SWRD sought to portray. They were all grounded on selfishness, to reap in the bounties that the spoils of office afforded. Of course there was the famous mass crossover in 1964 led by Leader of House and Minister C. P. De Silva - one of the rare instances where the members of the government crossed over to the Opposition. Even here too there were murmurings that some of the crossovers were bought over in order to thwart the passage of the Press Council Bill. This mass crossover saw the fall of the Sirima Bandaranaike government and the eventual defeat at the hustings that followed. Another instance where a mass crossover precipitated a general election and a change of government was in 2001 when many heavy weights in the Chandrika government switched allegiance, paving the way for the UNP led UNF to come to power.

Since then, crossovers in parliament have been strictly one way traffic, from opposition to government, with members elected from one party, that lost at the elections, shamelessly betraying those who elected them, to sit in the enemy camp. What is more, despite the existence of a specific law banning crossovers, the Supreme Court under Sarath Silva validated the crossovers of messrs. Sarath Amunugama, Wijayapala Mendis, Nanda Mathew and Susil Moonasinghe from the UNP, where the whole electoral system was made a mockery of, with the foursome continuing to claim that they were still dyed in the wool Greens while holding ministerial office in the Blue camp.

But the country was yet to see the last of this spectacle. Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2008 engineered the crossover of 18 UNP stalwarts to help him pass the 18th Amendment with the required two thirds majority. All the crossovers were rewarded with ministerial office and other perks and privileges, while most had their pending cases before courts withdrawn and others having their outstanding bank loans written off. The UNP, needless to say, did not get much encouragement from the law to have the renegades unseated.

The symphony is bound to continue into the unforeseen future if some drastic measures are not taken to rein in prospective crossovers. It is a betrayal of the people's franchise. There are those who argue that provisions should be made for “conscience crossovers” either way. But today the system is so corrupt and mired in sleaze, no one in their right minds will believe that a crossover was made for altruistic reasons. As suggested by the Constitutional Council a member who crosses over should be made to stand for a by election as in the old days. Let the voters’ judge the authenticity of the crossover's claim that what he/she did was done on their behalf.