Cardinal Malcom Ranjith made these observations while addressing a gathering of devotees who attended the National Day of the Sick in the basilica of Our Lady of Lanka in Tewatte recently.
He claimed that Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith is batting for Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa yet again by preparing the groundwork to raise the cut off point of the percentage of votes polled in elections depriving minority parties of its representations in parliament.
Currently, 196 members are elected in multi-seat constituencies through the proportional representation system where each party is allocated a number of seats from the quota for each district according to the proportion of the total vote that party obtains in the district.
The minority parties representing different religious faiths are still relevant and they are capable of addressing the issues faced by the minorities, political analysts noted.
Therefore, calling for the ban of such parties would be only beneficial for major parties like the ruling party, they pointed out.
By forming alliances, major political parties have become captives of smaller religious/ethnic parties, and these major parties are forced to cater to the demands of the smaller groups.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith’s call for banning ethno religious parties will help to take away any leverage the smaller parties have over the larger parties which would allow the Rajapaksa regime to rule the country without listening to their voice, they added.
