EDITORIAL - The truth is in the tours

Abouquet to those backbenchers. Finally, some intelligent Parliamentarians appeared to have realised their duties as representatives of the people.
Instead of being the typical Magodis Thumas, a derogatory term coined by a famous Lankan cartoonist capturing the key qualities of Politicians, the backbenchers of the United National Party (UNP) have started conducting observation tours to places where public money is or has been spent.



Their visits commenced with the now infamous Hambantota tour.

About five Parliamentarians who went on an observation tour to monitor operations at the newly built port and the airport in Hambantota were attacked and stones were pelted by goons at the bus they were travelling in—obviously backed by Provincial politicians of the ruling regime.

Nobody has been punished for this rowdyism despite the media having extensive video footage of the incident.

However, the backbenchers did not stop there.













































They seemed to have realised that they were trend-setters and it was too good to be discontinued after just one unfortunate incident.

After Hambantota, they visited the Noraichcholai coal power plant, where they were greeted with warmth and cordiality. They inspected the power plant and made their comments.

Some might say this has been done to gain political mileage. Definitely one of the objectives would in fact be to gain political mileage by visiting places where the consensus was that a lot of public money had been squandered to satisfy the whims and fancies of the ruling clan.




However, their recent visits to the Dehiwela Zoo and the Nagoda  Hospital in the Kalutara District, show that their tours are increasingly becoming people-centric rather than politically motivated.

Some of the ruling party parliamentarians have belittled these tours by making various disparaging remarks. But it is time that they should understand how important this step is towards a vibrant democracy where spending of public money comes under scrutiny for the greater good.

Instead of criticising, the ruling party backbenchers should also go on observation tours to see what their government is doing. It is needless to say that their observation shouldn’t be partial.




Our suggestion is, the UNP Parliamentarians who go on these observation tours should visit a single place at least three times until they could come up with a concrete conclusion about the place and how it is being operated.

A single visit is unlikely to give them a thorough idea about the place and their comments to the media would be prejudiced due to their
pre-occupied mindsets.