Bashing bureaucrats

Tuesday 31st December, 2024

The honeymoon between the state service and the JVP-led NPP government is apparently on the rocks. Public employees overwhelmingly voted for the NPP at both presidential and parliamentary elections this year, as evident from the postal vote results, but some NPP ministers have issued warnings to the public service, accusing it of being an impediment to the implementation of their policies and programmes. These politicians are learning to navigate the governance issues the hard way, and their frustration is understandable, but the blame for their failure to live up to the people’s expectations cannot be laid solely at the feet of state workers.

Minister Sunil Handunnetti has recently vented his frustration at public officials, accusing them of failing to implement the government’s directives. He has reportedly flayed them for obstructing the government by using various laws, rules and regulations as excuses. Likening the 2022 mass uprising that led to the collapse of the previous government and made thousands of politicians leave politics, to a tsunami, Minister K. D. Lal Kantha has warned that public resentment will trigger the next ‘tsunami’ against the public service. These warnings can be considered part of a psy op to make the bureaucracy bend to the government’s will. Strangely, the public sector trade unions that would take to the streets at the drop of a hat under previous governments have chosen to remain silent on the current leaders’ diatribe against state workers.

The public service has become synonymous with inefficiency and earned notoriety for various malpractices including corruption. It hardly serves the interests of the ordinary people, who are disillusioned with it. Public complaints abound against most state officials who seem to derive a perverse pleasure from inconveniencing the people. Yesterday, we published a letter to the editor about how the police and the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) had made a Sri Lankan professional jump through the hoops when he sought their help to trace his lost phone; he wasted many hours at a police station in a Colombo suburb and the TRC headquarters before returning home frustrated. So, the NPP ministers’ criticism of the state service may have struck a responsive chord with many resentful people who want public service reformed and held to account. However, the blame for the sorry state of affairs in the public service should be apportioned to politicians, who have systematically emasculated it over the years. Corruption and servility of bureaucrats in key positions have also taken their toll on the integrity and efficiency of the public service.

The establishment of the independent Public Service Commission has not yielded the desired results; the state service is not free from political interference. Politicians’ efforts to leverage popular mandates to railroad state officials into doing their bidding on the pretext of serving the people’s interests better must be frustrated. It may be recalled that the SLFP-led United Front government, which secured a two-thirds majority in Parliament in 1970, rendered the state service servile. The UNP administration, which obtained a five-sixths majority in 1977, followed suit. All governments have since had the public service on a string.

The state service is part of the Executive, according to the Constitution. It is not a mere appendage of any branch of government, and should be able to act independently within the confines of the Constitution, other laws and regulations. After all, one of the NPP’s main election pledges was to ensure the independence of the state service and enhance its efficiency while improving the state employees’ lot by way of biannual salary revisions, etc.

Interestingly, the current ministers’ swipes at state employees remind us of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s antipathy towards the state service. A former combat officer in a hurry, he, as the President, wanted all his orders carried out swiftly with no questions asked. He once declared that his orders had to take precedence over government circulars. Instead of lambasting the public officials, he should have been thankful to them for delaying the implementation of his ill-conceived orders, which became his undoing. This is something the NPP politicians, who are also flaunting their huge popular mandate, should take cognisance of.