Thread by @NadsMaj

1. We are being asked to trust a parliament where only 15/225 MPs have made their asset declarations public. tisrilanka.org/mpassets

In 2017 when RTI became operational one of the first ever requests filed by @tisrilanka was for then PM @RW_UNP's Asset Dec.

2. Presidential Secretariat under @MaithripalaS appealed against RTI Comm order that these documents should be in the public domain. Court case continued after @GotabayaR became Prez. Still languishing in Court of Appeal.

3. RTI Comm order on initial request by TISL came in late 2018. Since Feb 2019, @TharakaBalasur1, @EranWick, @MASumanthiran, @alizmoulana, Vasu, Vidura, @HarshadeSilvaMP, @RamanayakeR and others were among first MPs to take leap and make asset declarations public.

4. There has been little momentum since but with the emergence of #GotaGoHome protests, there have been renewed calls for Asset Decs and campaignn funding sources to be made public.

5. Granted those calls emanated from people like @tisrilanka and @asokao who have been advocating for this for years but it was good to see protesters catching on too.

6. As politicking goes into high gear, important political reforms like these tend to be swept under the rug and no doubt @RW_UNP et al are counting on our attention being elsewhere hoping for these recent calls for transparency and accountability to fizzle out as in the past.

7. An election will be called soon hopefully and as per my vow at previous election too, I will only vote for candidates who make their asset decs public. This time around we should be asking for campaign funding disclosure as well.

8. The citizenry deserves to know who funds their representatives and whom they're actually representing.

9. P.S. - despite repeated outreach, the JVP/NPP members in both the previous and current parliament have flatly refused to make asset decs public. They say that such measures are 'just for show'.

10. Actually in 2018, then MP @NalindaJay was highly taken up with the idea and when it was first mentioned to him he pledged to take it to the politburo so the party could decide. I guess the decision was a No.

11. Both @Dr_HariniA and @sunilhandunnet1 have since used the phrase 'just for show' on panels where I've had the opportunity to question them.

Make of that what you will.

12. To be clear I'm not saying that any of the 15 who have made their Decs public are any more or less trustworthy than those who haven't. I'm also not saying that this is a 'be all and end all' solution to the trust deficit between @ParliamentLK and the public.

13. It is quite possible that even among those who have made their Decs public some maybe lying or have wealth held by proxies.

IMHO though this is the closest thing to a silver bullet solution to promoting transparency and accountability with major potential spillover benefits

Correction - 13/225. Two of the MPs from the last parliament who voluntarily and unilaterally made their asset decs public, @alizmoulana and Ashu Marasinghe, were not re-elected.