Friday 4th October, 2024

Much is being spoken these days about the need to eliminate corruption, which has eaten into the vitals of Sri Lankan society. However, clean governance has been reduced to a mere political slogan in this country, and the corrupt continue to go places. While Sri Lanka is paying lip service to the task of ridding itself of corruption, former Singapore Minister S. Iswaran has been sentenced to one year in jail for receiving gifts worth USD 300,000 and obstructing justice while in office.

Charges against Iswaran included accepting expensive gifts such as tickets to English Premier League football matches, the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix, London musicals and a private jet ride. If Sri Lankan politicians were to be prosecuted for such offences, most of them would be behind bars. The new government of Sri Lanka has taken moral high ground and is making a public display of what it calls its commitment to eliminating bribery and corruption. It has received praise from foreign diplomats for its anti-corruption drive, but its leaders are among the politicians who have received undeclared funds.

Iswaran, who held several key Cabinet portfolios, such as transport, communications and trade, had to resign as a minister last year, when his transgressions came to light. He initially protested his innocence, saying that he would fight to clear his name, but subsequently he pleaded guilty to five charges.

The Singapore court rejected Iswaran’s plea for leniency. Presiding Judge Vincent Hoong is reported to have said: “Trust and confidence in public institutions are the bedrock of effective governance, which could all too easily be undermined by the appearance that an individual public servant has fallen below the standards of integrity and accountability.” The classification of a minister as a public servant is of interest. Sri Lanka’s new government should seriously consider having Judge Hoong’s obiter dictum prominently displayed at all state institutions, here.

What basically made Singapore’s quantum leap from the ‘Third World’ to the ‘First World’ possible was its successful war on bribery and corruption under the unwavering leadership of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY), who also restored the rule of law. Clean governance has enabled the city state to retain its No 2 spot on the World Bank rankings for ease of doing business.

In a previous editorial comment on the arrest of Iswaran, we pointed out what LKY had said about ministers and officials in this part of the world. In his widely read book, From Third World to First, he has said: “The higher they are, the bigger their homes and more numerous their wives, concubines, or mistresses, all bedecked in jewelry appropriate to the power and position of their men. Singaporeans who do business in these countries have to take care not to bring home such practices.” When one sees Sri Lankan politicians and bureaucrats enriching themselves and living the life of Riley with impunity, one remembers LKY’s memorable words.

All Singaporean politicians who did not heed LKY’s aforesaid warning were severely dealt with. The fate that befell Teh Cheang Wan, the Minister for National Development, is a case in point. When the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau launched a probe into an allegation of bribery against him in the mid-1980s, he sought to meet LKY, who refused to see him until the investigation was over.

Wan took his life, and his suicide note said, inter alia, “As an honourable oriental gentleman I feel it is only right that I should pay the highest penalty for my mistake.” If the Sri Lankan ministers had received the same treatment as Wan from their leaders, most of them would have been pushing up the daisies by now, and the vital sectors such as health, education, finance, agriculture and trade and commerce would have been free from corruption, and, above all, fake and substandard drugs would not have snuffed out so many lives in the state-run hospitals.

Now that Singapore has set an example to other countries by throwing Iswaran behind bars, will it extradite one of its citizens, Arjuna Mahendran, to Sri Lanka to stand trial for his involvement in the Treasury bond scams carried out on his watch as the Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka? Singapore should help other nations fight corruption, shouldn’t it?

Minister of Public Security Vijitha Herath has said the new government will do everything in its power to have Mahendran extradited. Let him be urged to ensure that the Attorney General’s Department makes a formal request to the government of Singapore to that effect, again.