Internship programme targets parliamentary oversight in Sri Lanka

Parliamentary officials from Sri Lanka have welcomed an internship programme based in India designed to boost standards of parliamentary scrutiny and governance in their home country.

The four-week training course, organised in New Delhi under the aegis of the Indian parliament with assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat, enabled five parliamentary officers from Colombo to gain first-hand experience of the workings of the Indian state legislature.

Dhammika Dasanayake, Deputy Secretary-General of Sri Lanka’s parliament, praised the support supplied by India, adding that the financial sponsorship provided by the Commonwealth Secretariat had helped to make the programme viable.

“This has been a very useful opportunity since both India and Sri Lanka share the same Commonwealth practices,” he said. “It has also been very cost-effective since India is a neighbouring country and the Commonwealth Secretariat has been supporting.”

Deepening and strengthening democracy

The intensive course, which ran from 4 November to 4 December 2009, tackled executive accountability, scrutiny of public expenditure and the procedural devices available to Members of Parliament to raise issues, as well as the role of the opposition, the media, electoral systems and local self-governing bodies.

The programme was provided by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, India’s lower parliamentary assembly, and its Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training, which has trained nearly 500 parliamentary officers from around the world since its international course was first initiated in 1985.

Lok Sabha Secretary-General Shri P D T Achary described the internship as a means of “deepening and strengthening democracy, which is one of the core concerns of the Commonwealth”.

He said: “This programme provides a platform to parliamentary staff to benefit from the rich and varied experience of the largest working democracy in the world.

“We bring together officers working in representative institutions and facilitate greater people-to-people contact which, in itself, strengthens democracy and which is another Commonwealth ideal.”

‘Useful in many ways’

The programme will help contribute to improving parliamentary governance in Colombo explained Mohammed Jasimuddin, Asia Adviser for Governance and Institutional Development at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

“The whole idea is for them to learn from best practices and processes up and running in the Indian parliament and to bring home lessons, change systems and improve efficiency and effectiveness,” he said.

Mr Jasimuddin added that the Secretariat’s backing of the internship programme, funded through the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, was just one element of a broader package of support to the association’s developing member states.

He continued: “The concept is to strengthen the democratic system of governance across Commonwealth countries. Those that have a strong democratic system are helping weaker systems. The governance structure in India is robust and renowned and Sri Lanka wants to learn from it.”

One of the parliamentary officers from Sri Lanka, Kolitha Jayawardene, speaking during a visit to the Lok Sabha, stated that the internship “was useful in many ways”, adding: “[I gained] a better perspective on the role of the second chamber in a bicameral system and also the crucial role of the opposition in a parliamentary polity.”

Another participant, H M Herath, said she felt that the programme had helped her better understand the “practices and procedures of the Indian parliament”.

Key Links:

• Public Sector Development
• Country Profile: Sri Lanka