By Shaahidah Riza

If there was any bad precedent in passing the Office of the Missing Persons (OMP) Bill, the Joint Opposition MPs were responsible for it, said Minister for National Co-existence Dialogue and Official Languages, Mano Ganesan.

He was referring to newspaper reports which indicated that the passing of the OMP Bill reflected a bad precedent. He added, “The Speaker of the House, did his very best, and even went out of the way to bring control and amity between legislators in Parliament the day the OMP Bill was passed. Unfortunately, his efforts did not succeed totally. The Joint Opposition MPs who were causing chaos were repeatedly asked to get back to their seats and to respond civilly to the law making process. But, instead of that, the JO MPs led by senior MP Vasudewa Nanayakkara and Junior MP Geetha Kumarasinghe were raising slogans and singing songs. Some of them were even dancing. This was in the Well of the Parliament, the Well of the Supreme House; however they behaved there in the way they behaved at Lipton Circus.”

The OMP is a commitment the government had with the international community, to bring Sri Lanka back to the International arena, he said.

“The OMP is an apparatus which has been established to send a message to the local and international community that Sri Lanka, as a country, is totally dismissing the saga of enforced abductions and persons going missing. We have already committed to an international convention with regard to this issue. The other issue is there is no particular community which has got references in the Act which was recently passed. Nobody consider that it is meant only for the North and the East. It is not just for Tamil communities. It is applicable to all. There is also no time frame,” he noted and added that the OMP will benefit all regardless of their geographical location or the time frame when the disappearances took place.

Courtesy:Ceylon Today