By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
The Sri Lankan Supreme Court’s landmark judgment last week that State Minister of Tourism Diana Gamage was legally ineligible to serve as a Member of Parliament (MP) on the grounds that she was not a Sri Lankan citizen raises some crucial questions.
The Supreme Court gave the ruling after hearing an appeal filed by social activist Oshala Herath challenging the Appeal Court’s dismissal of his petition against Gamage’s membership in Parliament.
Gamage, who came to Parliament on the National List of the main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB), began to support the then Gotabaya Rajapaksa Government.
Her support for the Government continued after Ranil Wickremesinghe took office as President and she was also appointed as State Minister of Tourism. She earned a dubious name for her ridiculously controversial speeches about the night economy and cannabis cultivation.
Former Colombo District MP Mujibur Rahman of the SJB has been nominated to fill the vacancy in Parliament caused by her disqualification. He resigned from his position as an MP to contest the mayoralty of Colombo in the Local Government Elections, which were scheduled to be held in the early part of last year and were later postponed indefinitely. This is an opportunity for him to come back to Parliament as the Local Government Elections are not likely to be held in the near future.
How was this allowed?
The main charge against Gamage was that, despite being a foreign citizen, she was nominated to Parliament. In a statement to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) earlier last year, she said that she had renounced her British citizenship after 2014 by handing in documents saying she no longer needed it and had never obtained dual citizenship. Accordingly, she has been an MP for almost four years without being a citizen of any country.
The important question is, how was this allowed? The Supreme Court has specifically pointed out in the judgment that very few people suspected of violating immigration laws had been given special privileges in this country.
Herath had alleged that Gamage held two British passports while obtaining two Sri Lankan diplomatic passports and submitted forged documents, including a fake birth certificate, to obtain them.
It is important to note that the Colombo Magistrate’s Court said at the time that there was sufficient evidence to support the fact that she had submitted a fake National Identity Card and birth certificate to obtain a Sri Lankan passport.
Gamage is the second MP in the current Parliament to be stripped of membership based on a Supreme Court ruling. Batticaloa District MP Naseer Ahamed was disqualified by the Supreme Court late last year for supporting the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Government’s 2021 Budget contrary to the decision of his party, the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC).
When Ahamed lost his seat, it was thought that the seats of many other members would also be at risk because, in the current Parliament, many members of all parties except the National People’s Power (NPP) have broken away from their parties and are functioning independently within the House.
Although it was expected that party leaderships would take legal action against these members on the basis of the judgment against Ahamed, nothing happened.
SJB legality
After the judgment against Gamage, the legality of the SJB led by Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa has also been questioned. Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said in Parliament on Wednesday (8) that anyone could approach the court asking whether the SJB could remain in Parliament.
“One could question whether Diana, who has been declared as a non-citizen of this country, can register a political party. One could also question whether the MoU signed by the SJB General Secretary with Diana is legally valid. Further the validity of nomination papers signed by Diana for certain MPs is also questionable,” the Minister said.
The SJB appointed Gamage as a National List MP in return for transferring control of the Ape Jathika Peramuna (AJP), a party run by her and her husband Senaka de Silva, one-time aide to the then General Sarath Fonseka, to the breakaway United National Party (UNP) faction, headed by Premadasa. It is because of this that these questions are being raised after her disqualification.
However, former Chairman of the Election Commission Mahinda Deshapriya has given the answer to these more clearly than the politicians of the SJB. Having said that there is no legal barrier to non-citizens registering a political party, he noted that the Sri Lankan law only prevented non-citizens from voting in elections and becoming MPs.
Gamage was never General Secretary of AJP and she never signed the nomination papers of the SJB. The AJP was formed by the late Mangala Samaraweera and Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi, who broke off the political alliance with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The General Secretary of the party was Ruwan Ferdinandez, a confidante of Samaraweera, and Gamage’s husband took over the post later, Deshapriya explained.
More dual citizens
Meanwhile, before Gamage, actress Geetha Kumarasinghe lost her seat as an MP through a court ruling over an issue related to foreign citizenship. Kumarasinghe was a Sri Lankan citizen and a citizen of Switzerland when she contested in the Galle District as a candidate of the Mahinda Rajapaksa-led United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in the August 2015 General Election. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which was passed by the ‘Yahapalanaya’ Government headed by Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe, at that time prohibited dual citizens from contesting elections.
Now there is an expectation in some political circles that the issue of dual citizenship in Parliament will receive fresh public attention in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.
Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) Leader Udaya Gammanpila said that when he had asked the Immigration and Emigration Department for a list of names of those who held dual citizenship using the Right to Information (RTI) a few years ago, the Immigration Controller had claimed that they did not have a mechanism to find that out.
We have witnessed the irony of three amendments to the Constitution in the last eight years centred around two members of a political family who had dual citizenship.
Originally introduced by the ‘Yahapalanaya’ Government to curtail the powers of the executive presidency, the 19th Amendment barred dual citizens from contesting elections.
Later, the 20th Amendment, brought in by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Government to increase the powers of the President, allowed dual citizens to contest elections again.
The 21st Amendment, introduced in October 2022 by President Wickremesinghe’s Government after the Rajapaksas were ousted in a popular uprising earlier that year, again prohibited dual citizens from contesting elections
.
More than one-and-a-half years have passed since the amendment came into effect, but no MP deemed to have dual citizenship has resigned. United Republic Front (URF) Leader Champika Ranawaka publicly stated at the time that 10 members of the current Parliament were dual citizens. No MP with dual citizenship has come forward to resign and preserve the dignity of their office.
All MPs of the current Parliament were elected at the August 2020 General Election. At that time, the 19th Amendment, which had a provision prohibiting dual citizens from contesting, was in force. It is obvious that the MPs who are said to hold dual citizenship concealed the truth when they filed nomination papers to contest the elections.
They had hidden the truth not only from the Election Commission but also from the leaders of their party. Or it must be said the leaders nominated them as candidates despite knowing the truth.
Identifying dual citizen MPs
The major issue in the matter is the problem facing the State institutions involved, including Parliament, in identifying dual citizen MPs.
When Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena was questioned by the media about the possibility that dual citizens had been elected or appointed to Parliament, he said it was not Parliament’s responsibility but that of the Election Commission. But Nimal Punchihewa, then Chairman of the Election Commission, said that it was not their responsibility to inquire about the citizenship of a person filing nomination papers to contest the elections.
His stand was that anyone could approach the court on this matter if there was enough evidence. It is to be noted that former Chairman Deshapriya also took the same stance when complaints were made that Gotabaya Rajapaksa had filed his nomination for the 2019 Presidential Election without giving up his US citizenship.
It was announced that the Department of Immigration and Emigration would submit a report about the controversy that had arisen over some MPs keeping their dual citizenship secret, but eventually it became a forgotten story.
If such a statement had been issued, the MPs with dual citizenship would surely have been forced to resign. Leaders of political parties in Parliament have an important responsibility in this matter. But none of them seem to realise their legal and moral responsibility.
Leaders are never known to have asked any of their party MPs if they hold dual citizenship. ‘Find out if you can’ seems to be their approach to this issue. Such is the quality of our present-day politicians.
Courtesy:Sunday Morning