Thursday 2nd January, 2025

New Year messages are usually run-of-the-mill statements which say very little in many words. But the one President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has issued for 2025 can be considered different; it sounds like a mini policy statement. He has highlighted his government’s primary development goals, which include the eradication of rural poverty, the implementation of the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ initiative and the building of a digital economy. The President has also said in his message that his signature project, ‘Clean Sri Lanka’, whose launch coincided with the dawn of 2025, ‘aims to uplift society to greater heights through social, environmental, and ethical revival’. At the inauguration of ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ yesterday in Colombo, the President said the initiative would go beyond a mere environmental clean-up, and it aspired to ‘restore deeply eroded social and environmental fabric of the country’, and the government’s aim was to ‘create cleanliness and rejuvenation across all sectors of society’.

It is only natural that the eradication of rural poverty figures high on the JVP-led NPP government’s list of priorities. The JVP’s support base has been predominantly rural, and its expansion to urban areas to the extent of improving its electoral performance significantly occurred after the formation of the NPP coalition. More than 80% of Sri Lankans live in the rural sector, which is also home to about 80% of the country’s poor, and therefore, the government’s efforts to eradicate rural poverty make economic and political sense. Why the NPP administration is keen to build a digital economy is also understandable. Previous governments only paid lip service to the digitalisation of the economy, and that is one of the main reasons why this country has been lagging behind many other developing nations.

Everything about Sri Lanka’s economy is antiquated and looks like a relic from a bygone era. An analogue economy is an anachronism in today’s digital world, where e-commerce, the use of big data for decision-making, digital currencies, the integration of AI in business processes, automation, etc., have become the order of the day. It is heartening that President Dissanayake has undertaken to digitalise the economy as a national priority.

The government’s efforts to achieve the upliftment of society through social and environmental revival also deserve public support. However, the reference in President Dissanayake’s New Year message to ‘ethical revival’, which is also emphasised by other NPP leaders at various fora, is intriguing. It reminds us of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s policy statement presented at the inauguration of the Fourth Session of the 8th Parliament in January 2020. He said among other things: “One of our main themes during the last election was the development of a virtuous, law-abiding and disciplined society. The public has given us a mandate for this purpose.” The people believed in Gotabaya’s pledge to bring order out of chaos that the UNP-led Yahapalana government had plunged the country into, and elected him President in 2019 because they considered him a stickler for discipline. Most of those who backed Gotabaya and the SLPP switched their allegiance to Dissanayake and the NPP subsequently.

After the 2019 regime change, the then Opposition including the NPP accused the SLPP government of trying to position itself as the guardian of morals and enforce discipline on the people by decree. Using his military background to bolster their claim, some of them asked whether Sri Lanka was becoming a country like ‘Oceania’ ruled by Big Brother in Orwell’s novel, ‘1984’, where the Thought Police play a crucial role in ensuring compliance. Such questions are bound to be asked about ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ due to some NPP stalwarts’ frequent streams of invectives against the public service. Their hostile campaign is considered part of the NPP’s strategy to tame the public officials who are not willing to subjugate their professional independence and integrity to the government’s political agenda.

The government is apparently on a campaign to make the public service out to be Sri Lanka’s Augean Stables, and its task will be easy because the people are resentful towards state employees. Hercules diverted two rivers through King Augeas’ filthy stables to clean them, but the NPP government is waiting for a tsunami to flush Sri Lanka’s Augean Stables. Minister K. D. Lal Kantha has warned that the public service will be hit by a ‘tsunami’ similar to the one that helped clean Parliament.

Let’s hope that the ‘tsunami’ the NPP bigwigs are talking about will not turn out to be a socialist version of McCarthyism, which led to the repression and persecution of the left-wing individuals in the US about seven decades ago. Sri Lanka is no stranger to witch-hunts against public officials and others after regime changes.

Wednesday 1st January, 2025

The Supreme Court (SC) has delivered its much-awaited verdict in a fundamental rights case pertaining to the leak of three questions in the first paper of the 2024 Grade Five Scholarship Examination (GFSE); the award of free marks has led to a violation of fundamental rights, the apex court has ruled, ordering that a solution be adopted in keeping with the recommendations of an expert committee appointed to study the issue, which triggered a public outcry. The SC decision is most welcome, and one can only hope that it will be carried out expeditiously. The education authorities must not be allowed to find simple solutions to serious problems which come about due to their lapses.

Question paper leaks adversely impact the integrity of the examinations held by the Department of Examinations (DoE), as is obvious, and therefore everything possible must be done to prevent them and ensure that deterrent punishment is meted out to the perpetrators of examination rackets. We suggest that new laws be introduced to impose severe forms of punishment like long jail terms and heavy g fines for such offences.

Besides, in this day and age, technology plays a central role in our lives, and the DoE must be equipped to meet emerging challenges effectively. The Government Printing Department and the Police came under cyberattacks yesterday. This points to the growing vulnerability of key state institutions. The National Medicines Regulatory Authority suffered a massive data loss due to a cybercrime.

The phenomenal growth of the shadow education sector, which is full of unscrupulous wealthy private tutors who are ready to do anything to achieve the goal of ‘producing best results’ has rendered the DoE even more vulnerable. Hence the pressing need for it to adopt extraordinary measures to ensure the integrity of the competitive examinations it conducts. It should be provided with all required resources to protect itself. However, the examination question leaks at issue should not be allowed to eclipse the bigger picture in respect of the GFSE—the existence of popular and not-so-popular state-run schools and the painful struggle of the underprivileged students to gain admission to privileged schools.

An absurd solution to this problem has been suggested in some quarters—the scrapping of the GFSE! Such a course of action will deprive the underprivileged students of the only opportunity available for them to achieve their dream of entering popular schools. The ultimate solution, in our book, is to develop the underprivileged schools by eliminating the glaring urban bias in state expenditure on education so that poor children will not have to jump through the hoops to receive a good education, which opens opportunities in life.

This may be considered easier said than done, but it is a task that the JVP-led NPP government must strive to accomplish in keeping with its pledge to ensure equal opportunities to the people. After all, the JVP coined the pithy slogan, ‘kolombata kiri, gamata kekiri’ (‘milk for Colombo and melon/cucumber for the village’). That slogan, inter alia, enabled the JVP to mobilise the rural youth in their thousands for its second abortive uprising in the late 1980s.

Now that the JVP has gained state power with a mammoth majority in Parliament, it has to undertake the task of developing the underprivileged schools and provide the much-needed leg-up to the ordinary children.

Moreover, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has been an ardent advocate for increasing state expenditure on education. She was among the university dons who courageously took part in a long protest march organised by the FUTA (Federation of University Teachers’ Associations) in 2012, demanding that the state allocate 6% of GDP for education.

It is now up to the NPP bigwigs to translate their rhetoric into action and sort out the kiri-kekiri issue once and for all for the sake of underprivileged children. Let no excuses be trotted out.

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.