March 12 Movement: Strengthening Clean Politics for a Better Sri Lanka

We are preparing for a Parliamentary Election this year (2020), which marks the 5th anniversary of the March 12 movement; and political parties have already begun to make various comments about the candidates to be fielded. Meantime, one group has already commenced a dialogue on the need for bringing 100 new faces to the existing Parliament, from outside. Another group is engaged in inviting professionals contest with criteria being prepared for selecting them.

All these developments are indicators of success of the March 12 Movement. Today, the ground is ripe and enriched with our ideas. The objective of the March 12 Movement is to sow the best seeds in this fertile soil and gather a good harvest.

Recently, a group of representatives of political parties under the leadership of a group of multi religious leaders including a number of Mahanayake Theros, the Cardinal, leading Hindu and Islamic religious leaders launched certain criteria to be used in selecting electoral candidates which are similar to those advocated by the March 12 Movement. It marked a significant turning point in the dialogue launched by the March 12 Movement, five years ago, that a certain number of criteria must be considered in selecting candidates for contesting elections.

In other words, it must be one of the main responsibilities of all political parties to take into consideration the set of criteria that we have introduced and also the set of criteria set out by religious leaders who can exert profound influence on society, and combine both and devise an effective program to make them a reality.

We believe that the set of criteria presented by March 12 Movement should be updated, constantly to suit the current political contexts. Therefore, in reviewing the criteria, in order to make them relevant for today, we held a series of public consultations covering all districts as had been done when they were formulated initially.

Our intention is to enrich ourselves, constantly with new ideas and views from above mentioned consultations and update the original set of criteria incorporating new ideas expressed by respondents and seek consensus of political parties on the updated set of criteria which is due to take place during a ceremony scheduled to be held at the BMICH on March 12, 2020. We are also in the process of inspiring and mobilizing the voters to cast their preferential votes in conforming with these criteria.

We respectfully invite all religious leaders, scholars, artists, media institutions, journalists, professionals, trade union leaders and civic organizations to join hands with us to build a better Sri Lanka economically, politically, socially and culturally for our future generations.