Parliamentary protection laws now tools for abuse

The Parliament (Powers and Privileges) Act 1953 was designed to protect lawmakers from political intimidation and ensure legislative freedom. However, this is increasingly being used as a blanket privilege by MPs to slander their spouses and children, spread false statements about Government officials, to leak ongoing investigations and misinformation about business tycoons without consequence.

If truth is spoken in parliament do you require such privileges? Sri Lanka’s institutions are under global scrutiny due to the economic crisis, international debt negotiations, and allegations of human rights abuses.  Therefore it is expected that the country’s elected representatives will be more professional. Instead, the Sri Lankan Parliament increasingly resembles a comedy show. The time has come to modernise and civilise this law as what we are witnessing today is a grotesque distortion of parliamentary privilege, used not to protect democracy but to undermine it.

Vinodini Jayawardena