SLFP, UPFA strongly condemn brawl in p’ment

Minister of Transport Nimal Siripala de Silva says the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) strongly condemned the recent incident in the chamber of the parliament where the several legislators of rival parties got into a brawl injuring a few of their colleagues.

Addressing media yesterday the Minister disclosed the incident will be taken up for discussion at the next meeting of the central working committee of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.

Pointing out that last week’s incident was the first occasion in the history that a parliamentarian was injured, the Minister said the Parliament’s respect and sovereignty has been tarnished. He said that such incidents will immensely damage the public trust in parliamentarians.

Minister de Silva said necessary steps must be taken to in order to prevent such incidents in the future. As of now a code of ethics for Parliamentarians is being considered but it is important for MPs to possess self-censorship despite the proposal.

“No matter what, the members must take it upon themselves as a personal challenge to behave better. This will prevent the incident of this nature from repeating itself,” the Minister said.