P’ment adjourned over Vijayakala’s speech

• PM assures disciplinary inquiry
• Speaker also pledges probe but lawmakers demand expulsion  

By Ashwin Hemmathagama 

Due to the unruly behaviour of Joint Opposition lawmakers in Parliament yesterday over a controversial statement made by Child Affairs State Minister Vijayakala Maheswaran, the House was adjourned at 2.30 p.m.

The Joint Opposition lawmakers continued to disturb proceedings despite the disciplinary enquiry that Prime Minister Ranil Wickeremesinghe had assured Parliament over MP Maheswaran’s speech on the reemergence of the LTTE. A separate investigation was also promised by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya over her conduct as an MP under oath. However, identifying her as a “traitor”, the lawmakers wanted her to be expelled from Parliament with immediate effect, charging that she had violated an oath taken under the Constitution. However, Maheswaran, addressing the ‘Janapathi Nila Mehewara’ event held at Weerasinham Hall in Jaffna on Monday, had stated that “there is a huge need for the reorganisation of the LTTE in the North and East” and the reports relating to traces of the LTTE reorganising are heard regularly as a result of the “people in the North and the East not willing to discard the LTTE from their hearts.”

“Now we remember how we lived before 18 May 2009. In the present conditions our main intention is to bring back the LTTE if we want to live, if we want to walk freely, if we need our children to attend schools and return back,” she told the gathering, pointing out a recent incident where a six-year-old child was raped and killed.

Home Affairs Minister Wajira Abeywardana, Foreign Affairs Minister Tilak Marapana and Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Vigneswaran were also present at the occasion, according to reports.