The Hon. Sunil Watagala, Attorney-at-Law – Deputy Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs

¶ 01 Hon. Presiding Member, I take this opportunity to make a special point. These Regulations relating to foreign judgments have been requested from us for a long time, including by Hon. Members of the Opposition. Today, the Ministry of Justice is rectifying this. In fact, upon the approval of these Regulations published in the Gazette, the matters necessary to give legal effect to foreign judgments will be complete. As I understand, a significant public constituency appealed to us on this; those requests are today being endorsed and regularized. That is the first point I wish to make.

¶ 02 Next, I must say this at this moment. Instead of talking about these foreign judgments, the Opposition is engaging in a lengthy debate about the past local authority election and the situation that has arisen these days in local authorities which could not achieve 50 per cent. That debate was mainly about the Colombo Municipal Council. Having been defeated in their opinion, they began to attack the Provincial Commissioner of Local Government, the responsible state official who took a lawful decision. Now they are trying to spread that into the rest of the public service, threatening, “We are going to sue; you should be very afraid.” What is this talk? At this moment, I want to tell something to Hon. Mujibur Rahuman and to the entire Opposition.