Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation K. D. Lal Kantha is known for his straight talk—a trait that occasionally gets him into hot water. He has told state workers some home truths. Speaking at a ceremony to mark the launch of 500 Highland franchise outlets, yesterday, he lashed out at the public service, calling it a den of thieves. State employees had been held in high esteem in the past, but the public had a very low opinion of them at present, he said. It may be wrong to paint all public servants with the same brush; there are some good men and women among them, but Minister Lal Kantha’s sharp rebuke of state employees must have struck a responsive chord with the irate public.

The NPP government has put an end to the culture of corruption in politics, but the state service is still corrupt to the core, according to Minister Lal Kantha. One cannot but agree with him on his criticism of the sorry state of affairs in the public service, which needs to be cleansed urgently. But that task is akin to the cleaning of the Augean Stables and requires a Herculean effort. Successive governments have baulked at giving the public service a radical shake-up as state employees are a decisive factor in electoral politics.

Interestingly, the state officials Minister Lal Kantha has condemned in the strongest possible terms voted overwhelmingly for the JVP-led NPP in the last three elections, as can be seen from the sheer number of postal votes it received. In other words, the NPP has benefited from the political strength of the den of thieves!

The JVP’s trade union arm, which has a firm hold on the state sector, used to lead public employees to industrial action under successive governments, which had strikes and other labour disputes to contend with almost on a daily basis. The JVP trade unions and their members in the state sector have been behaving since last year’s regime change!

Trade unions cannot absolve themselves of the blame for corrupt practices among their members. Minister Lal Kantha himself has been a trade unionist. Trade unions, including those affiliated to political parties, are duty-bound to help reform the state sector and ensure that the interests of the public are better served. They have a pivotal role to play in helping the country achieve economic development.

The state service is notorious for overtime rackets, especially in the health sector, where some trade unions have thwarted the Health Ministry’s efforts to install biometric attendance marking systems. Therefore, the blame for the state sector corruption and other forms of malpractices should be apportioned to the trade unions and the political parties that have them on a string.

Will Lal Kantha and other JVP/NPP leaders explain why they have granted pay hikes to public employees without adopting measures to eliminate corruption in the state service, and enhance its efficiency? They sought to garner favour with the state employees numbering over 1.3 million, didn’t they? The government has also unveiled a grand plan to recruit 35,000 more workers into the state sector, which is already bursting at the seams!

The general consensus is that the rot in the public service set in during the SLFP-led United Front government (1970-77). That regime upended the state sector recruitment criteria and introduced the so-called chit system, enabling the ruling party politicians to provide employment to their supporters in the state sector. The public service has been reduced to a mere appendage of the political authority over the past several decades. Ironically, it was also under an SLFP-led government that the 17th Amendment was introduced to the Constitution to depoliticise vital public institutions.

Political appointments have taken a heavy toll on the state sector. Successive governments have catapulted their cronies to high posts in the public service. The incumbent administration also stands accused of trying to bring in an outsider with links to the NPP as the next Auditor General at the expense of an experienced officer. Thus, the self-righteous politicians who condemn the state service ought to turn the searchlight inward.

Saturday 24th May, 2025

Sri Lanka is never short of issues, ranging from frivolous to serious, so much so that one cannot keep track of them.

The government insists that salt has been imported in sufficient quantities, and the claims of a persistent salt shortage are false. It is apparently far removed from reality.

Yesterday, Minister of Trade Wasantha Samarasinghe proudly announced the arrival of a ship carrying salt, at the Colombo Port. Nothing could be more absurd in an island state than its government’s boastful claim that a salt scarcity has been overcome by importing that commodity.

However, this is not the first time Sri Lanka has imported salt, but on previous occasions governments imported it promptly when there occurred significant drops in the local production thereof; salt scarcities like the present one never occurred previously, much less became a political issue.

A salt shortage does not occur overnight. It takes months to manifest itself. The signs of the current one were felt a few months ago; it has come about because the government let the grass grow under its feet, ignoring warnings and waiting until salt disappeared from shelves to act. Now, it is boasting of the arrival of imported salt.

Salt prices have risen steeply, and a kilo of salt sells at Rs. 400, we are told. It is doubtful whether the salt prices will come down in the foreseeable future, for Sri Lanka is notorious for sticky prices.

The NPP would not have been able to savour power if not for the stinging scarcity of essentials that prompted the people to take to the streets in 2022. A chronic shortage of fuel became the undoing of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government. Needless to say, shortages of essential commodities have the potential to bring down governments in this country.

The SLFP-led United Front government collapsed in 1977 mostly due to the scarcity of food items such as rice. Hence prudence demands that the current dispensation learn from its predecessors and do everything in its power to make essentials available at affordable prices.

In fact, the current salt shortage is more than a taste enhancer being in short supply. It is a question of the ability of the incumbent government to make strategic decisions to forestall trouble. There’s the rub.

It may not be fair to ask whether the current administration is worth its salt simply because of the prevailing salt shortage, but the question is whether a government that cannot ever much as ensure a continuous supply of salt, which is cheap and easy to produce locally, will be able to prevent a shortage of costly petroleum fuel? Hypothetical as this question may be, anything is possible in this country. Whoever would have thought that the Rajapaksa government would ever exhaust the country’s foreign exchange reserves in a couple of years and cause scarcities of fuel, milk food and many other imported goods, and, above all, its leaders would have to run away?

It is high time the incumbent government stopped bellowing rhetoric and concentrated on delivering tangible results to the public.

Friday 23rd May, 2025

The Constitutional Council (CC) has rejected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s nominee for the post of the Auditor General. The Opposition has torn into President Dissanayake—and quite rightly so—for his attempt to have one of his cronies elected to the post of Auditor General at the expense of a highly deserving officer with 30 years of experience in the Auditor General’s Department. The rejected nominee has only five years of experience in the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, the Opposition has alleged.

Various professional associations, such as the Sri Lanka Audit Services Union, the Association of State Assistant Auditors Union, and State Auditors Union, have demanded to know why President Dissanayake overlooked the most deserving candidate for the post of Auditor General. But the government has chosen to remain silent.

The JVP-led NPP based its election campaigns on promises of good governance, etc., and flayed its political opponents for cronyism, which, it said, had ruined the public service. Now, the NPP is drawing criticism for cronyism.

The manipulation of the CC process yields adverse consequences. The incumbent government is all out to oust IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon. The controversy over his conduct would not have arisen if the Rajapaksa-Wickremesinghe government had not undermined the CC process to have him appointed IGP in early 2024. The CC was divided over his appointment; four members voted in favour of it, and two against it, with two others abstaining. The CC consists of 10 members, but it had only nine members at the time. The previous regime engineered a tie in the CC vote by interpreting abstentions as opposition to the appointment at issue and had Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardenea cast what was made out to be a tie-breaking vote!

One of the main reasons why President Ranil Wickremesinghe became unpopular in spite of his courageous political leadership for breaking the back of the country’s worst-ever economic crisis was that he succumbed to the arrogance of power, defended the corrupt and other undesirables, and enabled his cronies to secure sinecures and top posts in the public service. He blatantly undermined the CC and even sought to make the judiciary bend to his will, but in vain. No surprise that he came a poor third in the 2024 presidential race.

Are we to conclude that some of his predecessors’ sordid practices have rubbed off on President Dissanayake?

Politicians intoxicated with power cannot bring themselves to stomach defeat, and therefore the government will do everything in its power to have an NPP loyalist appointed as the Auditor General to ensure that its interests will be served in state audits. They know more than one way to shoe a horse or skin a cat. Hence the need for robust constitutional safeguards to prevent governments from undermining the CC process to achieve their political ends.

The CC deserves praise for having intrepidly torpedoed President Dissanayake’s move to appoint a fellow university alumnus as the Auditor General. Such bold decisions will go a long way towards safeguarding the integrity of the key institution tasked with depoliticising the public service. However, the CC has not stipulated selection criteria for the nominees for the high posts. If they had been in place, President Dissanayake or his predecessors would not have been able to nominate their cronies for the top positions in the state institutions, according to their whims and fancies. The CC stands accused of either rejecting or endorsing nominees in an ad hoc manner. Parliament and the CC must take up this issue and introduce selection criteria so that not even a government capable of mustering a majority in the CC will be able to have officials appointed to top posts on the basis of their political affiliations.

The NPP is rapidly forfeiting its good governance credentials. Out of its sheer desperation to seize control of the hung local councils, it has unashamedly opted for a political honeymoon with the very councillors it condemned as crooks before the 06 May local government elections. In power politics, expediency takes precedence over scruples. Horse-trading over the hung local councils as well as the President’s attempt to elevate a crony to the post of Auditor General has proved that the current dispensation is not capable of resisting the corrupting influence of power. It’s the NPP government’s moment of shame or lajja!