2015-08-03 15:33:00

S. Lankan bishops urge countrymen to vote for worthy candidates


Sri Lanka's bishops are appealing to their countrymen citizens to choose worthy candidates for ‎parliament during the nation’s August 17 general election.  The bishops are urging citizens to think of ‎present and future generations by electing representatives with great care.  "Loyalty to a party should ‎not be the sole criterion for voting," said Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, Archbishop of Colombo, president ‎of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Sri Lanka, CBCSL.  "The Catholic Church has always upheld ‎the importance of electing worthy candidates to the legislature as the people's representatives," the ‎bishops said in a July 31 statement.  "Educational background, general culture, integrity and honesty, ‎respect for law and order are qualities that should characterize those who are aspiring to political ‎leadership," the bishops said.  ‎

Bishop Raymond Wickramasinghe of Galle told UCANEWS that the bishops wanted to remind ‎citizens of their fundamental responsibility to cast an educated vote.  The statement from the bishops ‎was released amid a recent corruption investigation that saw former minister Basil Rajapaksa — brother ‎of the former president — and several other ministers questioned by the federal Fraud and Corruption ‎Investigation Division.‎  The Diocese of Chilaw distributed more than 50,000 leaflets printed in the Sinhala and Tamil languages ‎among its 47 parishes insisting on the importance of casting a vote for a qualified candidate. (Source: Ucan)








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