A research officer is to be added to the staff of each MP. The addition of a research officer alone will not bring about a qualitative change in the work of parliamentarians. What is necessary is to see that the available staff functions properly than increase the numbers.
Every MP is entitled to a staff consisting of a secretary, stenographer and a Karyala Karya Sahayaka. The purpose of providing an MP with this kind of staff is to help him serve the public efficiently. However the government, instead of providing the MPs with a suitable and experienced staff from amongst the public servants, gives the MP the right to recruit his or her own staff. This sometimes results in MPs recruiting staff from amongst their own families. This affects the efficiency of the MPs. If the MPs’ right to recruit their own staff is abolished and public servants from a government reserve are made available to them, it would probably make them more efficient.
Sri Lanka is the only country where MPs get a duty free luxury car once in five years. Most MPs believe that a good vehicle is essential to serve the people efficiently. But these vehicles are not used for public service but are sold at a higher price to buy an ordinary car at a lesser price. However according to the law in the country, it is illegal to sell or transfer vehicles that MPs get.
A few weeks ago the government confiscated two vehicles worth about six million rupees each used by Aravinda de Silva and a close relation and fined them Rs. 300,000 each on the grounds that they had purchased and used vehicles which had been imported duty free for another institution. But it is unjust to say the least that this same law does not apply to MPs.
Under the assets and liabilities law all candidates contesting presidential, parliamentary and provincial council elections must submit declarations of their assets and that of their spouses and their children to the Commissioner of Elections, while the elected representatives must submit such declarations every year to the authority specified by law. According to that law the declarations must include details of bank accounts and their final balances, landed properties, purchases and sales. Failure to submit declarations of assets and liabilities and failure to include necessary particulars or inclusion of erroneous information is considered to be a serious offence that could result in imprisonment or deprivation of civic rights.
The public also has the right to obtain on payment a copy of such a declaration made by anyone.
This law of assets and liabilities is so vital that even the immunity enjoyed by a president does not affect this law. But even that law does not operate properly in this country.
It may be observed that some ministers who were not affluent when they came to power have built not ordinary houses but mansions a few years after coming to power. The question is how they manage to earn so much of wealth in such a short time.
Although the best way to find answers to such questions would be to examine their declarations of assets and liabilities, the Presidential Secretariat follows a policy of abstaining from answering any query in that regard.
In Britain there is a special institutional system of parliament itself to consider complaints made by the people against MPs. When there are complaints of a serious nature, the institution concerned holds an inquiry about the MP and conveys to Parliament the conclusion arrived at.
Why cannot we have such a system? Such action would bring about an institutional system to which the people can make complaints if MPs are elected through malpractice, earn wealth through undue means or effect undue pressures. Such a reform would arrest the decline that has occurred in the morality of the people’s representatives.