Calculated munificence and hidden agendas

Thursday 20th June, 2024

The Constitutional Council (CC) deserves praise for having scuttled President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s plan to extend the term of Attorney General (AG) Sanjay Rajaratnam, who is to retire shortly. Five CC members voted against the proposal that the AG be allowed to stay in office for another six months. No AG has ever been given a service extension in this country since Independence. The reasons the government adduced for proposing to extend Rajaratnam’s term were absurd. It was claimed that his services would have to be retained in view of the Easter Sunday terror probes, the X-Press Pearl issue and the IMF programme!

Thankfully, arguments that the Opposition, the media and civil society outfits put forth against the proposed service extension for the AG were not in vain; the majority of the CC members apparently took them on board. The opponents of the government’s move rightly pointed out that an unprecedented extension of AG’s term of office at the behest of the President would lead to a quid pro quo, with the state prosecutor being under obligation to the Head of State as never before, and that would be inimical to the integrity of the AG’s Department and the legal process.

The welcome abortion of the government’s plan to keep the AG in office after he reaches the mandatory retirement age can be considered a baby step towards restoring public faith in the CC, which has come to be widely viewed as a mere appendage of the party in power. The CC tarnished its image by allowing itself to be manipulated by the government to appoint the current IGP. Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena drew a great deal of flak for voting in favour of that appointment on the pretext of breaking a tie, which was not there. One can only hope that the CC will continue to defeat the government’s moves to make it pull political chestnuts out of the fire.

There is said to be no such thing as a free lunch, and altruism is a rarity in politics, where expediency is the name of the game. So, the government’s calculated munificence towards the personnel of AG’s Department and Legal Draftsman’s Department could be considered a tactic to secure their support for its sinister political moves. Some of the Bills that have been formulated and government actions based on the advice of the AG’s Department have not passed muster with the judiciary. Some of the badly drafted Bills have been found to be inconsistent with the Constitution in toto. This is an indictment of the drafters thereof, the government and its legal advisors. The original version of the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, gazetted by the government, was riddled with errors, and there were some funny words in its Sinhala translation so much so that one wondered whether it had been drafted elsewhere like the Indo-Lanka Accord, and sent here for parliamentary approval.

Strangely, much is being spoken about pay hikes and enhanced allowances for doctors, Central Bankers and university teachers, but Parliament has ignored a staggering 300% pay and perk hike for the officials of the Attorney General’s Department and the Legal Draftsman’s Department. This was revealed by the President of the Joint Committee of Government Executive Officers, H. A. L. Udayasiri, at a media briefing early last month. He pointed out that the basic salary of a new state executive officer was Rs 46,615, but a junior state counsel of the AG’s Department drew a much bigger salary in addition to being entitled to a travelling allowance of Rs 100,000. His claim has not been denied.

Now that the CC has torpedoed the government’s plan to grant the AG a service extension, will Parliament, especially the Opposition members, instead of taking up issues such a pay hikes selectively to advance their political agendas, care to address preferential treatment that the beleaguered ruling alliance is giving to the legal agencies?