For decades voters have heard promises of integrity, justice and accountability. These promises have come with every election, but they have invariably ended in disappointment. Investigations have faltered, commissions have been wound up, and the very leaders who promised to end corruption and impunity have too often joined the ranks of those who perpetuated them. The NPP government is now making the point that it will do its utmost to deliver on its promises and commitments. The arrest of former president Ranil Wickremesinghe on charges of mis-spending government resources was perhaps to make this point.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake who is the government’s best communicator has countered the notion promoted in sections of the social media and political discussion that the government is not united on the issue of accountability. He has made it clear that the government will go ahead with pursuing those guilty regardless of the political fallout. Referring to the arrest of the former president he said, “This case is not politically motivated. We will not step back from our duty. Those who have abused public resources will face the consequences, whoever they are.” This assertion has drawn a line that many previous governments shrank from crossing.

In addition, the government is now making the point that it will pursue accountability with regard to human rights violations of the past that led to tens of thousands of disappearances. Addressing an event organised by the Office of Missing Persons s(OMP) to mark the International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Leader of the House and Minister Bimal Rathnayake said that the ruling party had experienced these violations at first hand. He assured the attendees at the event that the government would give justice to members of the JVP, LTTE, other organisations and innocent people with no connection to what they were accused of. He said, “We know what it is to live through these violations. We will not forget the tens of thousands of families who still wait for truth and justice. This government will pursue this matter, however long it takes.”

At the same event, Minister of Justice Harshana Nanayakkara laid out the government’s plans for expanding and strengthening the scope of the OMP. He said that the OMP would document at least ten thousand disappearances that had taken place prior to 2000, as the documentation process of post-2000 disappearances had not been completed. “The families of the disappeared have waited too long. The OMP will document at least ten thousand disappearances from before 2000 so that no life lost to enforced disappearance is erased from history.” In doing so it will be important to begin with the several presidential commission of inquiry reports that had been published on this and which the report of the last presidential commission to inquire into the past, the Nawaz Commission report of 2024 has summarized with recommendations. The earlier commission reports contain data that were provided three to four decades ago when the evidence was fresh in the minds of the witnesses.

Inclusive Participation

Ensuring accountability for human rights violations or for corruption committed in the past by previous governments has never proved to be successful. Invariably, the investigations have dragged on and those accused have managed to get off the hook. Previous governments that won mandates based on promises to deal with corruption have faltered right from the start or midway and ended up doing the very wrongs they promised to put an end to. The fate of the 2015 anti-corruption drive, which began with much public hope but petered out amidst compromise and scandal, remains a warning. However, the remanding of the former president has unified the opposition who fear they will be next in line. It has also agitated sections of the general public who are not accustomed to seeing their former leaders being put away in prison.

Resistance to accountability is bound to be very strong and will emanate from all levels and all sectors due to the entrenched nature of corruption and abuse of power. Therefore, the government needs to be strategic and not take on more than it can manage. Already, over 400 stalled corruption and fraud cases have been reopened, including the bond scandal and steps have been taken to recover misused state assets from former ministers and leaders. The approach taken by the government to corruption and criminal issues indicates a resolve to bring perpetrators to justice regardless of their status. Recent arrests of alleged criminal masterminds in Indonesia and extraditing them with the cooperation of Indonesian authorities are indications of international coordination which can be applied more generally.

A salutary feature of the event organised by the OMP was the participation of the international community and civil society. The OMP had invited a large representation of civil society activists in a positive recognition of their contribution to the issue. It suggested that this was no longer to be a closed process of government agencies, but an inclusive effort drawing legitimacy from those who have struggled longest for justice. In addition to civil society and international support, the government will need the support of the opposition to ensure sustainability over the longer period in dealing with issue relating to the ethnic conflict and internal war. It is here that the question of reconciliation and justice for war-time abuses will intersect most deeply with politics.

Bipartisan Commitment

In overcoming the challenge of corruption, abuse of power and impunity, the government needs to consider enlisting the support of those in the opposition who are most like-minded on the issues that require a bipartisan approach to resolve. This would include the Tamil and Muslim political parties. Without some measure of bipartisan commitment, the danger is that accountability and reform efforts especially in relation to the ethnic conflict may become mired in partisan politics in the future. Last week opposition leader Sajith Premadasa met with several representatives of civil society where he advocated the need for a kinder and gentler society especially in the post-war context and the need to ensure that state terrorism never arises again.

Last month the Cabinet of Ministers approved the development of a new National Policy and Action Plan on Reconciliation and Co-existence. This must not become yet another statement of intent but a concrete plan that delivers justice, guarantees language and religious rights, ensures fair representation in public service, and restores equality in development. A credible plan will include clear deadlines to establish the promised independent Truth and Reconciliation Commission, create a prosecutorial body to pursue emblematic cases from the war and the Easter Sunday bombings and scale back military involvement in civilian life in the north and east.

At the present time there is the real possibility of change. The revival of long-stalled corruption cases, the arrest of a former president and the pledges made at the OMP commemoration give reason to believe that change is possible. Resistance will be there in entrenched networks of privilege and power. It will surely emerge from vested interests and strata of society unaccustomed to accountability. It is here that inclusiveness as a strategy to ensure sustainability become crucial and the participation of civil society organisations and moderate opposition political parties and their members becomes important. National reconciliation so long out of reach may now be possible and with it the potential for more rapid economic development.

by Jehan Perera

On 7th May 2015, the University Grants Commission released a circular, entitled Ethics and Academic Accountability for Academic Staff in the Sri Lankan University system. The circular was prepared by the Quality Assurance Council of the UGC and included a section called Academic Freedom and accountability for mapping of workload and work norms.

Accountability has been a cornerstone of quality assurance that has institutionalised itself as a compliance process that mainly asks if universities are “fit for purpose” as in whether they respond to market needs and employability requirements, whether programmes are consistent in their content delivery and designed in a manner that is recognisable to accreditation agencies and to standardised qualification frameworks. Quality assurance has been introduced into the Sri Lankan context through World Bank loan cycles that have been in operation since 2003. Compliance has institutionalised an audit culture, self-assessment processes and formalised organisation of syllabi. Part of this accountability, in the Sri Lankan context, has been to ensure that academics adhere to the minimum hours as stipulated in the Quality Assurance circular mentioned above and other similar documents.

Accountability processes set in place through quality assurance cells have been understood for the most part as necessary as a means of reigning in straying academics who use their “freedom” to not show up to lectures, not complete syllabi and leave their students and often their junior colleagues to address their excesses. This figure of the renegade academic taking advantage of the system is one that is common, especially outside the academic community, and it has enabled a “quality” culture committed to policing academic workloads. Accountability processes have spawned the production of attendance registers, student feedback forms, peer evaluation and minimum required work norms regulations to supposedly bind academics to their commitments. Therefore, academics inform the administration of how many contact hours, how much time is spent on assessment and supervision and how much time is put into research and publishing to ensure that they are not ‘caught-out’ in audit processes for not adhering to the minimum requirement. Considerable time is required to record tasks with evidence in addition to actually doing them.

It is now well documented that the “quality” that is required from quality assurance processes is not something that emerged from academics or one that is supported by most academic communities across researched countries. It is, in fact, seen as a victory of a managerial process that has no actual commitment to improving quality that most academics understand as a transformative learning experience for students. Quality as mobilised by the Quality Assurance regime means only a surveillance process by which academic institutions can be more “efficiently” managed.

One of the processes that this new managerial method has spawned globally has been the workload allocation model (WAM) used to map and assign academic work. However, it has been established that such workload allocation models seriously underestimate the actual time required for academic tasks resulting, for example, in UK academics generally working 50-60 hour weeks well beyond the contracted 37. The University College Union (UCU) has worked to highlight the failures of the WAM across UK universities. The Sri Lankan system currently does not have a WAM process and relies on the annual audits to monitor academics’ time use.

In addition to the primary responsibility of teaching, marking research and publications about which the audit process asks academics there are many other responsibilities within the university system. The quality and ratings requirements has led to an explosion of journals at the University level, the faculty level and at the level of the departments that require at least one round of peer review that takes time to both coordinate and carry out. At the faculty level there are conferences for students as well as university wide academic conferences. Most departments have their own department conferences annually in addition to the faculty conference. In addition, certain course units, within the main degree programmes, have regular field placements that require lecturers to be with students on Saturdays as well, not to mention field training programmes. All honours degree students in the Faculty of Arts have an independent study dissertation component that is done over a two-year period, during which supervision, presentations and marking are carried out. In the past few years internships have become the norm across faculties. Academic staff are generally responsible for all coordination, including identifying institutions and monitoring student progress, as well as for grading field journals and internship reports. At the faculty level there are additional tasks related to student mentoring, and many committees, including ethics review committees, research committees, various grievance committees, IT committees, environmental committees, the periodic faculty review committees, curriculum review committees, post-graduate committees and committees formulated to deal with emerging issues. Staff are also expected to teach on the weekends in their department’s post graduate programmes. The quality assurance process does not currently map time used in such work or ensure an equitable distribution of such tasks.

In the UK the UCU workload surveys conducted between 2016 and 2023 reported distressing results. Most academics work beyond their contracted 37.5 hours per week with some reporting 70-80 hours during term time. In the Southampton UCU branch survey 72.3 % said their workload was very high or unmanageable requiring working on evenings and weekends and 75% reported that overwork had impacted their mental health. We currently do not have the information regarding the wellbeing of academics in the Sri Lankan system. It is likely, however, that academics in Sri Lanka, too, are facing similar challenges.

Several issues, related to the particularities of the Sri Lankan context, must also be taken into consideration in the discussion about workload. The difficulty with dealing with the administration is one such issue. The productivity culture that academics have been compelled to commit to – particularly through the several World Bank loan cycles – has not been institutionalised to the same extent at the level of the administration. In fact, certain tasks, formerly taken up by the administration, are now done by academics (entering marks into the system, for instance). The administration’s requirement of multiple signatures for what seem to be simple permission processes, the inability to rationalise procedure to ensure speed, the complexities of accommodating activities that the system is not familiar with and where processes are not already in place, are exigencies that academics have to constantly navigate. A junior colleague recounted how she rarely finds the space to eat lunch on time on any given workday and how she is compelled by stress to often work late into the night to keep up. It was frustrating for her to have to work around an administration, for whom lunch hours are sacred and leaving work at 4.15 is the rule. Another colleague recounted how junior staff leave letters must be carried from the Department to the Dean’s Office and then from there to the VC office by the staff members themselves to ensure that they are processed on time.

Managing research grants within the university remains nightmarish and will be the subject of another column. Within the administration, too, however, there are figures who carry a major part of the coordination load who must be recognised. Yet, for the most part, academics are compelled to find workarounds to ensure that their own work is not hampered by administrative inertia.

The prevalence of hierarchy within departments that compels junior staff to carry out much of the service tasks mentioned above is also an issue. Junior colleagues stated that in addition to service tasks that they apply for themselves there are many others that they are compelled to “volunteer” for and others that are assigned to them without their consent. One junior colleague stated that some of their peers are better at avoiding service responsibilities, while others are compelled to carry a greater load. Therefore, often, it is the same faces that one sees in many of the committees. There are also reports of Heads of Department refusing to accommodate junior staff service responsibilities by reducing their teaching load and by insisting that they carry out work tasks even during time that they have taken university-approved leave. Although such excesses are rarely the norm the absence of a culture of accountability to the staff, particularly the junior staff, leaves room for such excesses to occur.

Among the problems identified in the Quality Assurance processes, the absence of any consideration for academics’ working conditions is only one. Any reforms to the higher education sector must take cognizance of the harm created by the quality assurance processes and revisit the notions of both quality and accountability with staff wellbeing and a transformative learning experience for students at its center.

(Farzana Haniffa is Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Colombo)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies

By Farzana Haniffa

I was part of the action that took place at Gatz, City of Dreams, Cinnamon Life, on the evening of 24th August, 2025 … mainly to check out singer Noeline Honter doing her thing at this prestigious venue.

Noeline is, indeed, a Sri Lankan legend in music, entertainment and television, and she proved her versatility and talent that night, showcasing her superb vocal range and adaptability to an audience that went gaga over her performance.

She has a singing style of her own and her singing encompasses multiple genres, including Rhythm and Blues, Soul, Pop, Rock, and Jazz.

Noeline’s opener, on the 24th night, was Shirley Bassey’s classic ‘Never, Never, Never’, and her charismatic stage presence and engaging singing style immediately got the attention of the full house.

Her repertoire included many hits of the past, including ‘Simply The Best’ and ‘Pata Pata,’ and with a voice that conveyed emotion and dept.

Noeline has performed with top professional bands and entertained diverse audiences worldwide and that is precisely why she is capable of adapting to different musical styles and performances.

On the 24th night, Noeline was backed by Terry & The Big Spenders and they were brilliant, too – not only in providing the music for Noeline to entertain, but as performers themselves.

Terry Bertus was awesome and so was Viraj Perera. I truly enjoyed listening to them.

In fact, the band, as a whole, was very impressive and I hope more music lovers would get the opportunity to see this outfit in action.

Noeline Honter: Awesome performance

From what I gather, everyone present to catch Noeline Honter in action at the Gatz, on the 24th, had a good time and the applause said it all.

Brand Ambassador and Entertainment Consultant maestro Sohan Weerasinghe did a marvelous job, making certain that everyone was having a good time.

He even partnered Noeline, on stage, for a couple of songs!

There were quite a few known faces among the guests, including Mignonne and Suraj, Naushad from Flame, Rajiv Sebastian, Honorine and Yohan, Sidath Nanayakkara (Redemption) , and Chrys Wikramanayake.

They had all come to see Noeline Honter, who is now based in Australia, in action, and they all had praise for Noeline’s performance.

Noeline has another date at Gaz – 20th September with Mirage – and I’m certain it will turn out to be another unforgettable event.