Editorial

The fallout from the Presidential bombshell ten days ago over the manner in which the Government’s anti-corruption drive was being (mis)handled still reverberates. He lashed out that there was a ‘political agenda’ being pursued and that he was kept out of the loop. The remarks opened a crack in the Government of National Unity — and in a move to backtrack, the Media, the usual scapegoat when leaders blunder, is being blamed for misreporting and misquoting the President.
The Bribery and Corruption Commission has been plagued with difficulties since its inception 15 years ago. It was never allowed to function properly. In the early years it became a joke when the state prosecutor assigned to it started investigating the Commission’s Director General in an in-house turf battle. Then, the Commissioners themselves became victims of corruption allegations. This week, the incumbent Director General tendered her much anticipated, principled resignation even though her actions always have the imprimatur of the three Commissioners.

On both counts, i.e. the ‘political agenda’ allegation and not ben kept informed, the President is on thin ice. On the one hand, if there is a political agenda his entire Government is to blame because it is they, en voce, who are beating the drum day in and day out, that the former Administration (of which the present President was a key office-bearer) is corrupt and how they will be taken to task. On the other hand, there is no need for the President to know (and therefore intervene) in ongoing investigations.

This is more so, particularly for a President who is fond of saying that interference in the Judiciary has now stopped (and indeed it is less now). There is no requirement that he be kept informed, nor need he give directions on how independent Commissions must act. His statement that autonomous Commissions, must keep him informed because he appoints the commissioners ought not be the case.

The fact of the matter is that the Bribery Commission – and the Police, involved in the anti-corruption drives past and present, don’t work in a political vacuum. The real world is something else. Politicians love to control them. And those idealists who campaigned for this Government in January 2015 expecting a change in the political culture are deeply disappointed.

At the root of this socio-political dilemma this country has had to live with in recent years is the Executive Presidency.

The Executive Presidency had long been a suggestion of one of post-Independence Sri Lanka’s political giants, J.R. Jayewardene. He felt that the vagaries of electoral whims and fancies led to unstable Governments and Parliaments. This trend was not in the best interest of an economically developing country. He felt a strong Executive President not having to rely on shaky Parliaments was the answer. What it bred in the process, however, and largely due to those who held the job of Executive President, was a gallop towards authoritarianism with too much power in the hands of one individual. The checks and balances through the Separation of Powers as one finds in other countries that have an Executive President were slowly but surely done away with.

The Executive Presidency helped to a large extent in the armed conflict against a separate state, but the side-effects of one-man rule were too much for the country as the January 2015 results showed.
One would have preferred the incumbent President who sat on that seat due to the very cry to abolish the Executive Presidency (and the only President to be elected without a political party), to have opted for an apolitical role – the leader of the nation irrespective of partisan politics. And indeed he has acted as a Statesman, above political agendas on an instance or two. He took pride in whittling down some of his powers through the 19th Amendment to the Constitution but it turned out to be only a sop. Instead, he got sucked into the same old political cesspit, fighting to gain control of the party he leads de-jure – not de-facto.

His decisions are getting more and more coloured – from the anti-corruption drive to the postponement of Local Government elections; from saying the National Unity Government with the UNP will continue to saying in the same breath that he has given a “blank cheque” to the UPFA and SLFP secretaries to form an SLFP Government by itself.

It is this current dichotomy that has enslaved the current holder of the office of Executive President and keeping him from his otherwise good intentions of ushering Good Governance.

Landmark judgment by Supreme Court
A landmark judgment by an increasingly independent and liberal Supreme Court captured the headlines recently. It now needs to catch the attention of the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary as well.
The judgment relates to the case of a lady graduate teacher who went to the media to complain of sexual harassment at her school in violation of the Establishment Code because she had to say bad things about the school, the Department of Education, and the Government.

The Supreme Court said that though the teacher may have violated the Establishment Code, by speaking to the media and disclosing Government information in the process, the Court “had to weigh the facts and circumstances”. The Judges held that though freedom of expression is not unrestricted, it is an essential ingredient in a functioning democracy.

This thinking must be hailed without reservation. It is a reminder that old notions must be set aside. There was a time when public officers used to be terrified to speak to the media due to fetters laid on them under the Establishment Code. This resulted in offenders getting away lightly leading to the overall degeneration of the public service.

Information is the best disinfectant. It can clean corrupt state institutions and expose misdeeds. In this case, the Court, as the final arbiter of justice in this country gave relief to a harassed teacher despite a restrictive Government Code. It declared that it was “more than convinced” that the “intolerable and unacceptable conduct and behaviour” of the offenders caused the teacher “to express her suffering and views quite freely in the hope of availing to herself the protection available under the law”.

Sri Lanka has entered a progressive era with the enactment of the 2016 Right to Information Act and this judgment gives a refreshingly new direction on the way the courts of Sri Lanka will view sexual harassment in the workplace, out-of-date Government regulations and freedom of expression in this country.