Chief Government Whip Prasanna Ranatunga has been playing a key role in getting the governing party MPs to the House during parliamentary votes on key legislation.

However, Ranatunga had faced an interesting incident when he was making arrangements to get the governing party legislators to the House during the last parliamentary session when a vote was taken on election finance legislation.

A large number of parliamentarians were engaged in finalising nomination lists for the Local Government Elections that week and were out of Colombo. Ranatunga was informed by district coordinating MPs that many of the legislators were in their constituencies.

Ranatunga had then called all assistant Government whips for a meeting at his office to task them with calling all Government MPs to attend Parliament. MP Janaka Thissakuttiarachchi had reportedly said that he did not have a vehicle to attend Parliament.

Displeased with Thissakuttiarachchi’s response, Ranatunga had then inquired about the Government MPs who had attended Parliament and had then found that Thissakuttiarachchi had attended Parliament in a vehicle, according to news media reports.

After getting the relevant vehicle number, the Chief Government Whip had called the Government MP and asked him not to make false statements while noting that he (Ranatunga) knew that he (Thissakuttiarachchi) had a vehicle.

However, the Government Whip’s office managed to get the Government members at the time of the vote to get the legislation passed in the House.