Sri Lanka’s Catholic Bishops are appealing to their countrymen 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 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, Ucan reports.
