Speaker Jagath Wickramaratne threatened on Thursday to remove MP Dayasiri Jayasekera from the chamber after the MP protested against a ruling from the chair, the Daily Mirror reported.
The dispute
Jayasekera objected to the Speaker’s decision to examine a privilege matter first, before allowing him to raise it in the House.
The Speaker said he had to examine the matter before it could be raised. Jayasekera questioned that, arguing that such a procedure had not been followed in the past.
The report, filed by Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana, does not say whether the MP was in fact removed, whether he withdrew the protest, or whether the Speaker later ruled on the privilege matter itself.
What the report does not identify
The Daily Mirror does not say what the privilege matter concerned — the substance of the complaint Jayasekera was trying to bring is absent from the account. Nor does it cite the Standing Order under which the Speaker claimed the power to vet a privilege issue before it is raised, which is the precise point Jayasekera disputed.
That gap matters, because the disagreement is procedural rather than personal: the question is whether the chair may screen a privilege matter in advance, or must allow it to be raised and then rule. No outlet has yet published the Speaker’s authority for the first course.
Context
Thursday’s sitting was scheduled to take up a resolution under the Women Empowerment Act for debate and approval, according to the order paper for the September sitting week, which runs from September 8 to September 11 and closes on Friday with seven Private Members’ Motions.
The exchange follows a similar clash in May, when Parliament shut down MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake as he attempted to raise a Bribery Commission travel ban from the floor. Jayasekera, an SJB MP, has been among the more frequent users of the chamber’s procedural devices this year, including questioning whether a referendum lay behind the President’s rally series in August.
Sourcing note
This report rests on a single newsroom. Searches of NewsFirst, Hiru News, The Island, EconomyNext, Daily News, Colombo Gazette and news.lk found no other verified outlet covering Thursday’s exchange at the time of writing. Ada Derana was unreachable throughout this cycle, returning a CloudFront 403 on every request. We will add corroborating accounts as they appear.
