Setting a good example

Winding up the 2025 budget debate in his capacity of finance minister, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake once again told the country that legislation to abolish MPs’ pensions is forthcoming, presumably in the short term although he has not specified when. However, opposition lawmaker Ravi Karunanayake has stolen a march on the president and his government by bringing a private member’s motion to abolish pensions for parliamentarians which has already been unanimously adopted by the legislature and is now awaiting a formal government Bill for enactment. Ironically, MPs who voted unanimously to give themselves pensions are now on the brink of similarly voting to abolishing them.

We have on previous occasions harked back on the fact that former prime minister, Sir John Kotelawela, famously exhorted henda athey thiyanakan bedaganilla (as long as the spoon is in your hand, serve yourselves). This, our lawmakers have been assiduously doing over the decades. The parliamentary pensions, non-contributory as in the case of coveted pensions for life paid to public servants, was later extended to their widows and orphans. But in the case of the public service, surviving spouses and orphans were covered by a contributory Widows and Orphans Pension Fund while parliamentarians paid nothing for this extended privilege to their widows.

The president correctly understands that perks and privileges elected officials vote for themselves are deeply resented by the public. He has hence scored brownie points for himself and his government by announcing that having discovered that he was being paid an MP’s pension in addition to his salary as executive president, he was foregoing the former entitlement and has already written to parliament’s secretary general to that effect. He further announced that the present all powerful regime has decided that its ministers and deputy ministers will not enjoy both their parliamentary emoluments together with the salaries for their official positions. They are foregoing the former but will enjoy a fuel allowance on account of the latter. We do not know if this dual payment was made was so in the past.

Although President Dissanayake has not said as much, it appears that many of his predecessors in office have drawn their parliamentary pensions in addition to presidential entitlements covered by statutes. The demand for pensions go back to the previous House of Representatives when LSSP leader, Dr. NM Perera, a highly qualified senior full time politician with no professional income unlike some of his colleagues, suggested such payments. He has however been derided for, despite his socialist professions, being a plantation owner (Oakfield nd Moragolla estates) and owning a mill (Giridara) which became a cause célèbre in the sixties.

When legislation for parliamentary pensions was eventually enacted remains uncertain. Former secretary general of parliament, Mr. Nihal Seneviratne in his book of memories of a long career in parliament, which we are excerpting and running at present, says the legislation was introduced by a former speaker, Mr. KB Ratnayake, who was once minister of parliamentary affairs and sports. Other reports say that it came during the tenure of the JR Jayewardene government. However that be, such pensions have long been paid and many senior politicians who decided not to run for re-election fearing defeat at the last elections are now in receipt of their pensions.

Time was when eminent people spent private wealth to render public service through election to the legislature. Times have changed and opportunistic politicians seeking elected office to get what they can from such positions – legitimately and illegitimately – are dime a dozen. President Jayewardene often claimed that he made political office sufficiently materially attractive to discourage corruption. Singapore’s legendary Lee Kwan Yew did as much. While Lee achieved a desirable result, sullied occasionally though the guilty have been successfully prosecuted and jailed, Sri Lanka has abjectly failed on this score.

There was one instance in the sixties when a senior Eastern Province politician, who had served as a parliamentary secretary, lost his civic rights for seven years following the Thalgodapitiya Bribery Commission report and was expelled from parliament. Two ministers found guilty by that commission had the grace to resign. But we have seen a politician convicted of murder and sentenced to death being elected to parliament a few weeks later and being sworn as an MP despite the ruling of the attorney general that he was ineligible to sit. He was eventually acquitted on appeal, There was also a minister in the last government convicted for extortion with a suspended sentence of imprisonment and a hefty fine continuing to sit in the legislature and function as a minister while an appeal was pending.

The current government seem determined to halt the past practice of heaping gravy on the plates of elected politicians. No ministers or deputy ministers of the present regime live in government housing as was common in the past. Nor do the president and prime minister. There have been ministers who had built swimming pools at taxpayer cost in their official residences. One even installed an elevator in his official bungalow for his aging mother through a state corporation under his purview. Others have not paid utility bills for which they were liable.

The present regime has showcased profligacy of the past including luxurious mansions occupied by past presidents at taxpayer expense, hefty payments made to politicians whose homes and offices were attacked by aragalaya protesters far exceeding the caps on compensation payable to victims of natural disasters and much more. The report of the KT Chitrasiri Committee on trimming fat off the political establishment is in though not published. The government seems seriously intent on setting a good example and correcting past excesses.