Flinging stones from glass houses
View(s):With the run-up to Sri Lanka’s presidential elections intensifying, candidates, political parties and their supporters are getting into the battle with Colombo’s ‘elite’ civil society forces also joining the bandwagon.
While the presidential candidates are shouting themselves hoarse from public platforms and promising to move heaven and the earth to deliver the ‘goods’, human rights advocates and governance specialists are flexing their muscles, however only through public statements and closed doors’ meetings.
A few, like lawyers, are willing to risk the ‘consequences’ and conduct more, open public discussions to hold both main presidential candidates – Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena – accountable for their actions, and inactions.
Several civil organisations and academics issued statements this week on the crisis in the country stemming from excessive presidential powers that has led to abuse of the rule of law and everything that follows from unfettered presidential power, a fact that finally has been admitted by the President’s own cabinet. Prof. Chula Goonasekera in an article on this page has urged ‘non-voters’ (those who have declined to vote in the past for many reasons including that nothing will change this system since all politicians are corrupt) to go to the polls and vote to abolish the presidency. The Friday Forum, a group of intellectuals, has raised issues of governance and accountability and asked people to exercise their franchise for a candidate who is honest, transparent and accountable to the people.
But what is this ‘good governance’ that urban-centric civil society talks about? There are many definitions in the worldwide web widely perceived as today’s encyclopedia of knowledge, thought and wisdom. According to the United Nations University, good governance is a term that has become ‘a part of the vernacular’ of a large range of development institutions and other actors within the international arena. But it says, “What it means exactly, however, has not been so well established”.
This is true to a large sense in Sri Lanka. In the case of large corporate houses ‘good governance’ and ‘corporate social responsibility’ are practiced in different ways. For example one company would have a CSR project that would benefit a community but in the process also dovetails that company’s product to a higher level due to massive branding of the event. The media receives an avalanche of releases from companies of the ‘good’ they have done to society; it’s like a competition, a race to the top.
Others – very few examples in fact – would practise social responsibility without making a fuss or under the glare of media publicity. No return in investment is sought from money spent; rather the return is to ensure that the poorer community is uplifted and seeing their faces light up.
The larger majority of Corporate Sri Lanka argues that they have a responsibility to their main stakeholders in allocating funds for CSR projects and other achievements – winning awards, etc.
The World Bank definition of corporate governance has four pillars which refer to the foundation of trust among shareowners, directors, and managers. They are:
* Transparency: Directors should clarify to shareowners and other key stakeholders why every material decision has been made.
* Accountability: Directors should be held accountable for their decisions and actions to shareowners, and, in certain cases, key stakeholders, submitting themselves to rigorous scrutiny.
* Fairness: All shareowners should receive equal, just, and unbiased consideration by the directors and management.
* Responsibility: Directors should carry out their duties with honesty, probity, and integrity.
In this context, there were two ceremonies in Colombo on the same day this week to reward ‘outstanding’ Sri Lankans, with contrasting personalities picking up awards, one posthumously.
At one event, two people – a simple village school teacher who stood up to a scoundrel of a local politician who had forced her to kneel and a tea plantation manager who refused to be browbeaten by a corrupt politician and was sadly murdered – won awards for their integrity.
The other ceremony involved rewarding a group of top executives for distinguished service to their institution. While some of the recipients would – one may argue – deserve this accolade, the others have a lot of negative baggage (some political, some not transparent in their dealings to minority shareholders) and don’t deserve such recognition unless of course a warped form of ‘honesty’ is taken into consideration. A few respected individuals were saddened by this event with at least one politely turning down the invitation, expressing in private that he was shocked by the level of nominees this kind of ‘award’ offered particularly by a ‘respected’ organisation.
This spectacle is a sad reflection of the state of some part of the corporate sector where accolades and awards today matter more than downright home-spun honesty and integrity. It is also a wider reflection of Sri Lanka’s middle and upper middle class society.
In the World Bank lexicon, responsibility means directors carrying out duties with “honesty, probity, and integrity”. This surely must apply to behaviour as a good citizen – at home and in public – and personal wealth being acquired through honest, hard work and lawful transactions.
Thus how many of our ‘good citizens’ who win these and many other awards fit this profile? For that matter how many ‘good citizens’ belonging to civil society rights groups are also truly ‘honest’ in all what they do in public and private? While being critical of the never-ending corruption and the blatant disregard for the rule of law by governing politicians among other concerns, involved individuals in Colombo-based civil society groups should also ensure that their ‘own’ backyard is sound and whether they are squeaky and morally clean, and ethically sound. A common response – and a resigned one at that – received from these individuals when asked, “Hey why don’t you speak out against this (corrupt) individual?” … is: “What can I do … he/she is my friend.” This is apart from whether they themselves have led a decent, honest and exemplary life of which their children, grandchildren and neighbours are proud of.
While the village school teacher would have returned to her village with her trophy which will – no doubt – find a special place in her shelf and then gets back to an unheralded routine, for corporate executives it would have been one big celebration, probably at company expense!
Civil society engagement is crucial in the presidential polls to ensure a free and fair poll without bias, but it’s not too late for these actors to wake up,turn the search light inwards and vow to ‘do good’ before throwing stones from glass houses like today’s ‘criss-crossing’ politician.