Editorial
We pay, but we do not know
View(s):It bodes ill for any country when a government conducts business on the principle that what the people do not know will not hurt them. Sri Lanka has become such a nation. Despite its elephantine Cabinet, power is concentrated in the hands of a few. Many ministers are figureheads who learn of crucial decisions only when they sit down for the weekly Cabinet meeting. They sanction policies and initiatives that they have sometimes had inadequate time to study. There is also a marked absence of will, but that is another matter.
Within ministries, the situation is no better. Officials routinely confess they do not know why certain actions are taken — or that they were taken at all. Many conscientious, educated administrators are sidelined, their advice rarely solicited. On the flip side, the same small pool of trusted senior officials is stretched thinly across many tasks from law and policymaking to implementation.
Important instructions are sometimes delivered verbally with no written record of them. When the orders come straight from the top, as they often do in key ministries, they are not even explained. Process and procedure are collapsing across the board. A clear recent example of flapping about in the dark was Education Minister Bandula Gunewardena’s circular — overall, circulars are a problematic area — prohibiting State schools from absorbing students of international schools. The circular was not available at his ministry. It was not published on its website which has a special section for recent circulars. An official said only the minister could explain its contents because they were “mostly in his head”.
When the apparatuses of government are run this way, it is not logically possible for the people to be well-informed. What they know is restricted to the driblets published in the media and that is not even half the story. This is certainly not sufficient for them to make considered choices. Everything from how their Employees Provident Fund money is invested to why each kilometre of new road is so spectacularly expensive is treated as State secrets. Circulars are floated that officials find out about only upon waking up the next morning. Agreements are signed and kept under lock and key. Contracts are handed out but criteria, prices and terms or repayment are not revealed, or are only partially disclosed.
Such reticence sometimes extends to lawmaking. In 2011, the Government took over nearly 40 businesses and their assets through the Revival of Underperforming Enterprises and Underutilised Assets Act that was rushed through Parliament as an urgent bill. It took the affected parties by surprise, to put it mildly.
Separately, competencies are dropping in every sector. Scant regard is paid to the importance of collecting and collating statistics. There is no central place, for instance, that has data on how many Presidential Task Forces have been set up by this Government, their areas of study and the results of their deliberations. When asked, the Presidential Secretariat says such details cannot be revealed. Why?
Public consultation has become a myth. The media have their own challenges of extracting legitimate information from officials. A sense of fear and servility pervades the Government service, to the detriment of the people. Even those that know and are aware of what is happening are afraid to speak. They know that not all of it is restricted by the Official Secrets Act or the Establishments Code. But they dare not put this to the test.
Issues of finance — of procurement and expenditure, costs and margins — are closely guarded, like military secrets. Yet, by no stretch of the imagination could such matters be confidential in a civilised, democratic society. The people pay in rupees and cents, or in consequences, for decisions made inside closed door meetings. If the people pay, they have a right to know.
This is not to say nothing ever gets out. The intrepid do leak information in whatever way they can. For instance, when the Power and Energy Ministry submitted a Cabinet memorandum several weeks ago proposing to parcel out several wind power projects without open bidding, it got out. That would have forced the Ceylon Electricity Board to buy power from independent producers at Rs. 23 a unit when it could have been bought, as experts say, at half the price through a tender process.
Here, then, is a classic example of why the ordinary people are entitled to be kept in the picture. Every action taken behind closed doors has an impact on the lives of people, one way or the other. If the fancy highway costs 100 per cent more than it should have, we the people will have to pay.
Unfortunately, the proportion of such leaks in comparison to the volume of decisions that are taken in secret is miniscule. It is hoped that, as the situation deteriorates — and judging by the status quo, it will — those who possess vital information will release more of it for the public good. Perhaps this is why the Government wields such tight control over who knows what.