Crooks as cops

Friday 21st October, 2022

The government has gone into overdrive to boost state revenue. It has ordered the captive taxpayers to ‘stand and deliver’, and sought to mitigate the political fallout of the unconscionable tax and tariff hikes by claiming that unless such draconian measures are adopted to increase revenue, the country will have to forgo IMF assistance! It is acting as if the people were responsible for bankrupting the country and therefore had to be penalised!

The state has to collect taxes, and the public must pay them. But it amounts to an economic crime to exploit the hapless public by way of extremely high taxes and tariffs to recover losses that the government itself has caused to the state coffers. One of the main causes of the current economic crisis is the huge losses the country incurred due to ill-conceived tax cuts the incumbent dispensation introduced for the benefit of its cronies. A delay in seeking IMF assistance, excessive money printing and the Covid-19 pandemic have been identified as other causative factors. President Ranil Wickremesinghe has referred to them, inter alia, in his latest statement on the state of the economy. The theft and unbridled waste of public money have also weakened the economy. If these funds could be recovered, that would go part way to expediting economic recovery and easing the unbearable tax burden on the public.

The Sri Lanka Administrative Service Association (SLASA) is reported to have proposed that the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) and the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) be empowered to recover losses from the state officials and politicians responsible for misusing public funds. It has also called for the prosecution of the culprits. One cannot but agree with the SLASA. Interestingly, a discussion on this proposal has taken place at a meeting between the SLASA and the National Council Sub-Committee on Identifying Priorities in Formulating Short-term, Medium-term Policies, headed by SLPP MP Namal Rajapaksa!

The current Parliament is full of politicians accused of having enriched themselves at the expense of the public; they are notorious for misusing and wasting colossal amounts of state funds. Nothing is stupider than to seek their help to conduct investigations and recover funds that have been stolen or wasted. We are reminded of a pithy local saying: naduth hamudurwange, baduth hamudruwange, which refers to the violation of one of the cardinal rules of natural justice—no one should be a judge in his own case. What the SLASA has undertaken is also like ‘seeking the help of a female clairvoyant to catch a thief who happens to be her own son’, as it is popularly said in this country.

That the incumbent administration is all out to cover up its corrupt deals and economic crimes has become patently clear from the manner in which it engineered the ouster of Prof. Charitha Herath and Prof. Tissa Vitarana as the Chairmen of the COPE and the COPA, respectively. Its leaders are adept at bluff, subterfuge and obfuscation. In February 2018, the then Auditor General Gamini Wijesinghe, expressing his opinion on the Finance Ministry’s final accounts from 2013 to 2016, revealed that to bypass the regulation in Fiscal Management (Responsibility) Act, which requires national debt to be 80% of GDP, officials in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government had kept loans out of the balance sheet of the Finance Ministry, and instructed different institutions to obtain loans individually. As a result, it was not possible to assess the country’s debt, Wijesinghe said, noting that the task of untangling the mess and getting a proper idea of the country’s debt situation would take about ten years.

How can those who made a mess of national debt, indulged in waste and stole public funds be expected to prevent the theft and waste of people’s money, much less recover losses due to financial malpractices?

The biggest crooks who stole public funds and amassed wealth by cutting shady deals at the expense of the country have had themselves acquitted since the 2019 regime change. It is only wishful thinking that any losses that the country has suffered at the hands of rogues in the garb of politicians or officials could be recovered as long as the current government retains its hold on power.