Marvellous MPs

By Dharisha Bastians 

Performance rankings for Sri Lanka’s 8th Parliament constituted in August 2015 were released by Manthri.lk yesterday, with members of the opposition JVP dominating the Top-5 list. 

JVP Leader and Chief Opposition Whip Anura Kumara Dissanayake leads the rankings, with his party member Sunil Handunetti coming in second. UNP Matara District MP Buddhika Pathirana comes in third in the Manthri.lk rankings, with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe ranking fourth on the list of top contributors in Parliament. First time JVP MP Nalinda Jayatissa ranks fifth on the list, and the Manthri.lk analysis of his performance also finds him to be the most active of the new Parliamentarians elected at the August 17 2015 poll. 

The popular parliamentarian ranking system introduced by Manthri.lk - Sri Lanka’s first parliamentary monitoring platform run by Verite Research - tracks and analyses information on parliamentary activity to measure the performance of MPs in the 225-seat legislature. Performance is measured based on MPs activity in debates in the main chamber of Parliament, their use of Parliamentary instruments like adjournment debates and written questions and their involvement in Consultative Committees. 

At the launch of the Performance Rankings at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute last evening, Janeen Fernando of Verite Research said changes had been made to the Manthri.lk ranking system. It is no longer merely an overall performance ranking, but allows users to filter the rankings by topic, district, time and political party, Fernando explained at the launch. He said that while the Manthri.lk ranking was popular, it was not the primary goal of the platform. Manthri.lk offers users a much wider spectrum of information and analysis, including member directories, details about parliamentary business on a particular day, a breakdown of data and a searchable archive of parliamentary videos – all aimed at making Parliament more accessible, he explained. 

Executive Director Nishan De Mel of Verite Research which runs the Parliamentary monitoring platform explained the Manthri.lk vision, to create greater access to information about legislative activity, create visibility and foster answerability. “Manthri.lk creates some kind of accountability for MPs, it helps to determine whether they are doing the job they were elected to do,” De Mel explained. The monitoring platform ensures information about parliamentary activity is collected, seen and understood. “This means Parliamentarians are called upon to explain their behaviour,” he added. 

De Mel noted that Manthri.lk not only served the electorate that could assess the performance of its MPs based on information available on the platform, but also Parliamentarians. “Those who take their legislative responsibility seriously, those who actively participate are recognised and rewarded,” he explained. 

Manthri.lk was also creating an impact on the way Parliament worked, De Mel noted. He said that when the site revealed that only five MPs in the last Parliament accounted 66% of written questions, it raised questions about the system Parliament adopts to facilitate MP questions. “The Maithri.lk analysis made Parliament begin changing its rules about how questions could be asked,” he explained. 

Transparency International Executive Director Asoka Obeysekere who ran Manthri.lk at Verite Research when it was first launched in 2013, said the platform had really impacted the way Parliament is tracked. “It has changed the game,” Obseysekere said, speaking at the launch. 

In the less than one year old current Parliament, data unlocked by Manthri.lk has found that 101 MPs had submitted petitions on behalf of their constituents. The analysis found that 45 MPs have asked at least one written question in the past year, while 214 MPs have participated at least once in debates on new legislation, including the budget. On the other end of the spectrum, the tracking found that five MPs have not yet participated in any legislative activity over the past year. 

Interestingly, Manthri.lk data aggregation revealed that there has been a 10 fold increase in No Confidence Motions in the past 18 months that President Maithripala Sirisena has been in office. During President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s nine year term in office his Government faced a total of three no confidence motions. President Sirisena’s Government has faced five no faith motions in the past 18 months, the data aggregation found. The monitoring platform collates and analyses information on parliamentary proceedings as recorded in the Hansard. 

The launch of the Performance Rankings and the newly improved features of the Manthri.lk platform, included a panel discussion of Parliamentarians who rank among the top 25 best performers. The panel included JVP MP Sunil Handunetti (#2), UNP MP Buddhika Pathirana (#4), UPFA MP Bandula Gunewardane (#12) and TNA MP M.A. Sumanthiran (#13). The discussion was moderated by Nishan De Mel.