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Mangala’s task: More than spring-cleaning
View(s):Mangala Samaraweera is back at his old desk (if it has not been replaced with expensive furniture by an ostentatious predecessor) at the Foreign Ministry after a break of several years.
There have been two positive developments since the Maithripala Sirisena administration took office. The new minister’s first official visit abroad will, quite rightly, be to India at the invitation of his counterpart Sushma Swaraj. This will establish our diplomatic priorities for Sri Lanka is geographically where it is and immovably so, a fact that some of our pundits seem to forget or perhaps ignore.
The other is the appointment of veteran Sri Lankan diplomat Jayantha Dhanapala as senior international affairs adviser to President Sirisena which is commendable. At least the new President will be receiving advice from a seasoned diplomat instead of charlatans.
New External Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera
Only recently I wrote about Dhanapala receiving the 2014 International Achievement Award for Nuclear Disarmament for his continuous advocacy of global disarmament, an achievement simply ignored by the previous administration.
At least now the government will be advised to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) signed 18 years ago. Moreover the government should inquire why we failed to sign a joint statement by 155 UN member-states highlighting the catastrophic consequences to humanity of nuclear weapons use- the second year running we have done so.
Samaraweera would surely find that the External Affairs Ministry as it is known was not the office he left some eight years or so ago. The name change has hardly enhanced its reputation.
For the last month or more, I have been in Colombo following the election campaign. In that time I heard from several senior and mid-career officers that the Foreign Service has become increasingly fractious. The ‘principle’ that drives the ministry had most often nothing to do with creating an efficient service to represent Sri Lanka abroad and to provide thoughtful analysis and advice to our policymakers at home.
Foreign Minister Samaraweera will be able to ferret out the truth or otherwise of these allegations as he settles down in his job.
There are several major tasks before him, some of which he will surely not be able to complete in the initial 100 days. But even so the stable-cleaning should be set in motion now so that in the months ahead the real tasks of setting our foreign policy directions and selecting the right people with the necessary commitment and competence to carry them out in foreign capitals could be sorted out.
Among the tasks that need to be undertaken are:
= Firmly anchoring our foreign policy to non-alignment that has been the bedrock of our foreign policy from the mid-1950s and has stood us in good stead. There is the belief that being non-aligned necessarily means being anti-West which is a fallacy as other adherents of non-alignment have shown over several decades.
Some leaders have been cynical about non-alignment. For instance in the first months of 1979 during an interview at his Ward Place residence President J.R. Jayewardene told me that there were only two non-aligned countries in the world — “the USA and the USSR”. He was then the chairman of NAM and having realised his faux pas, as it were, told me not to write about it. “Otherwise I will lose my job.” Which job it was he never stated and I never wrote about it until his departure from office, that too only to clarify some erroneous comments of another journalist who had based his remarks on third or fourth hand hearsay.
Not only must we re-commit ourselves seriously to restoring our non-aligned credentials we must make it known to the world.
= The new administration has said it will get rid of political appointees in our diplomatic missions. It was referring, one suspects, mainly to the relatives of the former president still in office; brothers, sons, daughters, widows and close relatives of ministers and MPs; siblings or children of individuals such as chairmen of various government institutions including media organisations. Now it is told that even a relative of Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith has been moved from East Asia to be nicely ensconced in Paris.
Had Einstein been around he might have wanted to do some rethinking based on Sri Lanka’s own theory of relativity.
= Competent and senior diplomats, some of whom have been sidelined or sent into exile need to be resurrected. Sri Lanka cannot afford to allow capable diplomats to live in oblivion because they stood firm or because their faces were not acceptable.
I do not believe that seniority itself must be the sole criterion. Competence and merit should count as much or more than seniority.
Obviously not all political appointees can be recalled at once. This would leave a hiatus in some missions that cannot be filled as Sri Lanka does not seem to have enough qualified senior diplomats to fill some heads of mission posts.
This was a fault that can be traced back to the days of our first foreign minister Shahul Hamid who let recruitment to the service lapse, resulting in low or mid-level officers being promoted above their station before they were ready.
It would be best to start recalling those from over-staffed missions or those of little importance or newly opened ones. This would allow junior or mid-level career officers to hold the fort until there is a rationalisation of our missions and personnel.
Space does not permit a detailed examination. My own experience during my tenure as deputy chief of mission in Bangkok for 3 ½ years and deputy high commissioner in London for 2 years is that increasingly resources of our missions were being used and abused by politicians, their kith and kin and officials of various ministries and official bodies. Some thought that they had a right to diplomatic vehicles irrespective of whether they were on official duty or not. This was particularly so in London where vehicles were supposed to be out on “duty” without any previous authorisation from the EAM or clearance from senior diplomatic officers of the mission.
There is urgent need to tighten up the rules and regulations with regard to who is entitled to what and to have all requests channeled through the EAM. But more on all this later.