Weekend Nation Editorial

No wrong signals please

23 October 2016

The two major political parties of the country getting together to grapple with issues that no single party could resolve in the past is a rare but healthy development. However, like any other good thing in the world this too is not without its pitfalls. On some issues they have agreed while on others they have disagreed. There have also been occasions where ministers from one party have acted to the dissatisfaction of the other party.

Such behaviour has been manifest on many occasions – when presenting the budget, when preparing the VAT proposals, imposing duty on vehicle imports and handling corruption issues – creating rifts between cohabiting parties. These disagreements came to a climax most recently when President Maithripala Sirisena openly accused the FCID, Bribery Commission and CID of acting according to a political agenda, an open indictment on the UNP.

All this show the difficulties involved when two political parties with different views have to govern a country together. Therefore, it is necessary to have a proper mechanism to achieve consensus on all important and sensitive matters before any finality is reached. Just blaming each other will only upset the smooth functioning of the cohabitation arrangement and also confuse the ordinary people while frustrating all those who worked hard to bring this government into power.

The big projects like the Megapolis, drafting a good constitution, economic reforms, etc. are all important but more important would be to see that a hard-earned consensus governing system which provides the enabling environment for all that is preserved and continued.

One group trying to outsmart the other should not be part of the criteria of good governance as such behaviour will only create more suspicion and tension finally rendering the concept of cohabitation completely non-workable to the merriment of all those accused of corruption and financial crimes who are waiting for the fall of this government.

Lack of visible consensus at the highest level of governance can be an obstacle for some of the major reforms that are necessary for the country to progress.The wrong signals about the political stability could discourage potential foreign investors who are vital at this stage if we are to achieve the development goals that we have been contemplating.
The work in the much cherished independent commissions established under the nineteenth amendment should be carried out in a way their independence is properly displayed before the people and this could only be achieved by applying equal standards to people on both sides of the political divide when dealing with issues of corruption.

Sunday Times Editorial

Executive Presidency at the root of problem

23 October 2016

The fallout from the Presidential bombshell ten days ago over the manner in which the Government’s anti-corruption drive was being (mis)handled still reverberates. He lashed out that there was a ‘political agenda’ being pursued and that he was kept out of the loop. The remarks opened a crack in the Government of National Unity — and in a move to backtrack, the Media, the usual scapegoat when leaders blunder, is being blamed for misreporting and misquoting the President.
The Bribery and Corruption Commission has been plagued with difficulties since its inception 15 years ago. It was never allowed to function properly. In the early years it became a joke when the state prosecutor assigned to it started investigating the Commission’s Director General in an in-house turf battle. Then, the Commissioners themselves became victims of corruption allegations. This week, the incumbent Director General tendered her much anticipated, principled resignation even though her actions always have the imprimatur of the three Commissioners.

On both counts, i.e. the ‘political agenda’ allegation and not ben kept informed, the President is on thin ice. On the one hand, if there is a political agenda his entire Government is to blame because it is they, en voce, who are beating the drum day in and day out, that the former Administration (of which the present President was a key office-bearer) is corrupt and how they will be taken to task. On the other hand, there is no need for the President to know (and therefore intervene) in ongoing investigations.

This is more so, particularly for a President who is fond of saying that interference in the Judiciary has now stopped (and indeed it is less now). There is no requirement that he be kept informed, nor need he give directions on how independent Commissions must act. His statement that autonomous Commissions, must keep him informed because he appoints the commissioners ought not be the case.

The fact of the matter is that the Bribery Commission – and the Police, involved in the anti-corruption drives past and present, don’t work in a political vacuum. The real world is something else. Politicians love to control them. And those idealists who campaigned for this Government in January 2015 expecting a change in the political culture are deeply disappointed.

At the root of this socio-political dilemma this country has had to live with in recent years is the Executive Presidency.

The Executive Presidency had long been a suggestion of one of post-Independence Sri Lanka’s political giants, J.R. Jayewardene. He felt that the vagaries of electoral whims and fancies led to unstable Governments and Parliaments. This trend was not in the best interest of an economically developing country. He felt a strong Executive President not having to rely on shaky Parliaments was the answer. What it bred in the process, however, and largely due to those who held the job of Executive President, was a gallop towards authoritarianism with too much power in the hands of one individual. The checks and balances through the Separation of Powers as one finds in other countries that have an Executive President were slowly but surely done away with.

The Executive Presidency helped to a large extent in the armed conflict against a separate state, but the side-effects of one-man rule were too much for the country as the January 2015 results showed.
One would have preferred the incumbent President who sat on that seat due to the very cry to abolish the Executive Presidency (and the only President to be elected without a political party), to have opted for an apolitical role – the leader of the nation irrespective of partisan politics. And indeed he has acted as a Statesman, above political agendas on an instance or two. He took pride in whittling down some of his powers through the 19th Amendment to the Constitution but it turned out to be only a sop. Instead, he got sucked into the same old political cesspit, fighting to gain control of the party he leads de-jure – not de-facto.

His decisions are getting more and more coloured – from the anti-corruption drive to the postponement of Local Government elections; from saying the National Unity Government with the UNP will continue to saying in the same breath that he has given a “blank cheque” to the UPFA and SLFP secretaries to form an SLFP Government by itself.

It is this current dichotomy that has enslaved the current holder of the office of Executive President and keeping him from his otherwise good intentions of ushering Good Governance.

Landmark judgment by Supreme Court

 

A landmark judgment by an increasingly independent and liberal Supreme Court captured the headlines recently. It now needs to catch the attention of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary as well.
The judgment relates to the case of a lady graduate teacher who went to the media to complain of sexual harassment at her school in violation of the Establishment Code because she had to say bad things about the school, the Department of Education, and the Government.

The Supreme Court said that though the teacher may have violated the Establishment Code, by speaking to the media and disclosing Government information in the process, the Court “had to weigh the facts and circumstances”. The Judges held that though freedom of expression is not unrestricted, it is an essential ingredient in a functioning democracy.

This thinking must be hailed without reservation. It is a reminder that old notions must be set aside. There was a time when public officers used to be terrified to speak to the media due to fetters laid on them under the Establishment Code. This resulted in offenders getting away lightly leading to the overall degeneration of the public service.

Information is the best disinfectant. It can clean corrupt state institutions and expose misdeeds. In this case, the Court, as the final arbiter of justice in this country gave relief to a harassed teacher despite a restrictive Government Code. It declared that it was “more than convinced” that the “intolerable and unacceptable conduct and behaviour” of the offenders caused the teacher “to express her suffering and views quite freely in the hope of availing to herself the protection available under the law”.

Sri Lanka has entered a progressive era with the enactment of the 2016 Right to Information Act and this judgment gives a refreshingly new direction on the way the courts of Sri Lanka will view sexual harassment in the workplace, out-of-date Government regulations and freedom of expression in this country.

Sunday Observer Editorial

Ensuring justice, protecting morale

23 October 2016


None other than President Sirisena himself has asked the Police to ensure that a thorough and credible investigation is made into the deaths of two university students in Jaffna on Friday.

Initial news reports indicated that two students of the University of Jaffna had died in the early hours of Friday and that the police had claimed that the deaths were the result of a motorcycle crash.

Subsequently, however, a Government statement, that seemingly contradicted the early Police announcement, acknowledged that the cause of the students’ deaths may not simply be accidental.

Tensions were already high in the Peninsula at the end of the week as students reportedly gathered to protest the deaths claiming police involvement in the tragedy. President Sirisena’s directive to the Police must be considered a timely intervention to clear the atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust and uncertainty.

Such interventions by the political leadership are important when society becomes disturbed and restless over sudden tragedy, especially when the tragedy bears evidence of possible involvement of officers of the State. It is significant that the President did not overstep the mark with pretentious posturing and barely convincing hyperbole such as seen during the previous regime. That regime had not only a reputation for incessant crises of State heavy handedness in dealing with citizens but also for supposedly launching special investigations, even presidential inquiry commissions and committees, to probe such heavy handedness and its often tragic outcomes. We are yet to see the outcome of many an ‘inquiry’.

The list of encounters between students and security authorities – whether police or the armed forces – in which the civilians suffered, is lengthy during the previous government. Of course, if we look back over the decades, as successive governments became increasingly heavy handed in their dealings with civilians, such a list will be very long indeed.

However, there have been moments – too few – in our troubled and bloody history when genuine probes have been made into such controversial interactions between civilians and our uniformed men and women that have ended in tragedy. When, at last, the perpetrators of identified rights violations and even downright murder, are brought to book, that outcome is hailed for the rare occurrence of justice.

Sadly, the list of unresolved deaths, disappearances, torture, unjust secret incarcerations and suchlike involving the security authorities is very long with the names of the hapless victims now a too-frequent punctuation of our island’s record of human rights and social justice. Some individual names, such as that of Lasantha Wickrematunga, have reached worldwide circulation thanks to their prominent societal roles.

Others, like those of the five students who were shot dead on the beach in Trincomalee in 2005 and, the many other students who have died or been injured in yet-to-be-resolved incidents of violence involving the security authorities, are not remembered individually. Instead, they are numbers in the mounting victim toll.

And there are other lists of civilians who have died in incidents where their victimisation by the security authorities has not even been acknowledged. In the early years of the ethnic separatist insurgency, for example, the news media would conveniently report such unacknowledged victims as being ‘caught in the cross fire’. Lawyers in the North and East used an alternative term: ‘random firing’.

Today, thanks to the electoral commitment to transparency and justice, our national leadership has been quick to brush aside such hyperbole as ‘motorcycle accident’.

That the President, only a week earlier, had spoken up ostensibly to protect the interests and dignity of the uniformed personnel in the face of corruption probes, speaks volumes of the careful balancing of State interests and public accountability exercised by the head of State.

The Police and the armed forces have the reassurance from the very top that their pride comes first through thick and thin whether in ensuring their dignity in the face of hostile legal actions or in the rigorous internal clean-up of miscreants in order to re-establish that pride of our uniformed men and women.

In this, the National Unity coalition has demonstrated a general consistency in the governmental practice of transparency and accountability that is markedly at variance with the preceding regime which became known for its consistency in violating norms and perpetrating oppression. Repeatedly both the President and Prime Minister Ranil WIckremesinghe have shown remarkable coordination in their responses to public crises, thereby demonstrating the coalition government’s continued consensus to rule.

How this commitment to both justice as well as service personnel’s morale plays out in Jaffna will depend on the cooperation between officialdom in the North and the civilian population and their leaders. That it is a population that has suffered terribly at the hands of both the State as well as the rebel movement makes it all the more necessary that understanding and kindness couches the response of authorities in handling this latest tragedy in the North.

Sunday Island Editorial

Taxpayers owe MPs a living?

23 October 2016

 

None of our readers would have been surprised by Joint Opposition MP Bandula Gunawardene’s strenuous defence of the pernicious practice Members of Parliament brazenly selling their duty free vehicle permits for millions of rupees. Gunawardene, after all, having banqueted well at the political table having served as a minister in both UNP and UPFA cabinets, is no doubt familiar with the principles of self-service. We do not know whether this was a subject that was taught in his economics tuition classes which from all accounts were a roaring success. Our people are sufficiently savvy about the tendency of most MPs, regardless of their political complexions, closing ranks on matters of self-interest for this matter to need elaboration. Flogging their duty free vehicle permits to the highest bidders qualifies for this categorization and Gunawardena’s defence of the long prevalent practice was unsurprising.

We must say in fairness that he did not volunteer his opinion on the subject. He expressed his views in reply to a question at a Joint Opposition news briefing last week. Most of his parliamentary colleagues, many of who have profited hugely from the sale of duty free vehicle permits, have maintained an eloquent silence on this matter. Gunawardena argued that running for election in a system where the candidates have to campaign in a whole district requires huge expenditure and MPs selling their duty free permits is one way of defraying costs. The underlying premise of this proposition is that sitting MPs deserve to be assisted, really hugely funded, by the public purse (meaning government revenue) to get themselves re-elected. Once they are elected they are the recipients of lavish pay and perks including lifelong pensions which their spouses and dependent children receive after their passing with just five years of parliamentary service. We need not labor over itemizing the many perquisites they receive as incumbent parliamentarians as they are very well known.

If sitting MPs are assisted to fund their election campaigns with duty free vehicle permits they can sell for a virtual fortune, what about other candidates not similarly blessed? As it is the incumbents have handicaps like the jobs they were able to give their supporters and their kith and kin as well as other patronage benefits doled out from the State pork barrel. As we have said before in this space, one reason that the resolution to impeach President Premadasa attracted some signatures was that he was making an effort to stamp out the practice of MPs selling vehicles imported on duty free permits on ‘open papers.’ There was a special ‘Gestapo’ unit under a senior DIG stopping vehicles on the street and checking chassis numbers to find out whether they were imported duty free and then sold without formal transfer at the motor vehicle registry. This created a great deal of resentment among those who had engaged in that practice and they were naturally only too willing to sign the impeachment motion. The president realized that MPs were not creatures to be trifled with, called off the bloodhounds and conferred paid supervisory roles on those MPs who were neither ministers nor deputies entitled to pay and perks and smoothed ruffled feathers – all at public expense!

Nagananda Kodituwakku, a lawyer and public interest activist who had previously served as a customs officer, has filed papers in the Supreme Court alleging that the sale of duty free permits by MPs was not only improper but illegal. We must wait and see whether the court will uphold this contention and even if it does not hold with the petitioner, at least offer some obiter dicta on the moral and ethical aspects of this matter. There have been instances when judgments have been nullified with parliament adopting ‘corrective’ legislation sometimes with retrospective effect. We can’t see an adverse judgment on this question being allowed to stand with the consequent loss of a substantial benefit by all MPs. We must of course say in fairness that there are certainly MPs whose conduct has been strictly proper. They have not done anything to unduly profit financially from a benefit conferred to enable them to better perform their parliamentary duties. But there are also a considerable number of others without any such compunction. Kodituwakku says that the Right to Information law that has been recently enacted was of considerable benefit to him to obtain information for the purpose of mounting his legal action.

The dust has not yet settled on what the media has dubbed as President Sirisena’s "outburst" against three watchdog agencies of the State chasing corruption matters. Various damage control exercises have been mounted with presidential functionaries accusing the media of misquoting him or reporting the speech out of context. Sirisena, apparently, is particularly unhappy that his assertion at the end of the speech that the present government of the UNP and his faction of the SLFP will prevail was unreported or not as widely reported as it should have been. That is undoubtedly a valid viewpoint as it made clear that he was not trying to eject the UNP from the current arrangement. The parliamentary numbers, in any event, will not make this possible unless defections are engineered. That apart, the speech certainly would affect the efficacy of the anti-corruption chase; but whether it would ensure a course correction if in fact investigations have been selective in accordance with a political agenda remains to be seen.

With the budget due to be presented on Nov. 10, questions still hanging over the VAT Bill and the Central Bank bond issue due to be canvassed in court with COPE presenting a majority report and a dissenting one by its minority of UNP members, Sri Lanka is heading for interesting times in the short term. Let us hope that at least the weather gods will be kind to us in the meantime!