Columns

Last Sunday the Political Editor of this newspaper exposed some shady dealings at SriLankan Airlines which Minister Kabir Hashim had brought to light at a recent cabinet meeting. The Sunday Times said that what appeared to be closely guarded deals which had shocked many of the ministers including earlier Minister Kabir Hashim, the minister under whose purview the national carrier (or should it read national carrion?) is said to operate. All this has only added to the national disgrace which SriLankan Airlines has brought upon this country.

The irony of all this is that the politically dishonest who have been foisted on this country by a badly misled populace, castigated the previous government, especially its president and those around him for misusing and abusing the airline. These political frauds promised to cleanse the airline and eliminate nepotism and cronyism by appointing capable and efficient individuals to administer it just as they promised to clean up what they claimed was the Augean stable of the Rajapaksa years.

In the wake of the Sunday Times story last week, vital questions arise about the individuals who have been appointed to the airline and who appointed them

Instead what has this country got in return for electing a set of incompetents and dubious characters who have been knocking at the doors of power for years and whose only qualifications to be on the directorate of the airline are that they were childhood friends or school mates at an institution called Royal College (to which we shall return later), relatives or friends of UNP stalwarts and lawyers of a sort. Interestingly one or two of them do not live permanently in Sri Lanka and probably provide long-distance opinions on how to run an airline to the ground.

Yet if board meetings are held outside Sri Lanka these long-distance directors would probably vector in like drones on selected targets to provide a quorum, proffer their expert knowledge in running airlines of which they have not shown any visible proof and partake of any inebriating liquid which Danny Kaye called the “brew that is true” in the film Court Jester many decades back.

It was this newspaper that commented sometime in 2015 about one such horizontally-inclined traveller in business class whose state of vertical stability was very much in doubt to the cabin crew on a flight from Hong Kong to Colombo in his early days on board ( of directors not the aircraft).
The story related by Minister Hashim to the Cabinet detailing the shenanigans of some or all in the Srilankan Airlines might be too long and complicated to follow without more details.

But if Minister Hashim’s exposure of these seemingly shady deals struck by those running the carrier is correct then vital questions arise about the individuals who have been appointed to the airline and who appointed them. The immediate public disquiet about the manner in which this airline is run by garment manufacturers, pilots who have proven competence or experience as CEOs raise the airline from its nose-dive and others with bloated egos, came to be appointed eschewing all the laudable criteria these political popinjays promised in the pre-election days will only multiply the growing opprobrium with a so-called “good governance” government that had obviously  deceived the people then as it is defrauding the country now.
The Right Royal mess at SriLankan Airlines by a bunch of incompetents or individuals determined to make hay during the current bickering within a decrepit administration has been told many a time. In the meantime a politically-weak president sits at the centre looking hither and thither but seemingly unable to act decisively except to turn every dais into a pulpit.

The fact that a state-owned institution would bypass its minister and act with little concern for procedure and the chain of command is just another example of the arrogant value system of the Colombo business and social elite and those who aspire to join it as an entre to the good life that a section of this Government enjoys.

The complete insouciance with which the board has acted indicates that some in the board thought that they had enough support from powerful figures within the Government to ignore its own minister and that support would save their positions on the board.

What this newspaper previously wrote about the prevailing corporate culture at SriLankan Airlines as much as in other state-owned ventures penetrated by the cronies of the westward-looking Colombo ‘crust’ paying pooja to middling diplomats in Colombo’s diplomatic quarter, will not be the last of the expose’s as the media digs deeper into how a new set of government-planted officials and their buddies ravage an already struggling economy for a fistful of dollars.

The difference between the previous lot and the present is that the while abuse of state ventures and assets were more widely spread then, the present beneficiaries appear to come from a fairly close-knit section of society or more correctly from a particular institution that provided them with free education, leading to the mistaken notion that this gives them the licence to fiddle with this country anyway they wish throwing accountability and professionalism to the dustbin like last week’s parippu.

This arrogance and corrupt practice appear to have spread to the teaching staff of this institution which has, it is claimed, fiddled with recent admissions to the school. Two years ago when the new government had been installed some wise wag attached an important suffix after the names of appointees to high office including I believe ministers and their deputies. The suffix gained currency as it soon proved to be a truism. The suffix was FRCS.

It did not stand for Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, a qualification that most surgeons like to have after their name once they get through their early years with a scalpel. This new abbreviation stood for Former Royal College Student, a school a ‘hoo kiyana’ distance from the Cinnamon Gardens police station strategically-located quite wisely, one believes, by our colonial masters.

Is it not intriguing that many of the alleged scams, dubious deals like Malik Samarawickrema’s hiring of an American lobby firm to ‘sell’ Sri Lanka to US political decision makers so shortly before elections in the US, attempts to safeguard shady bond  dealers, efforts to delay and filibuster the COPE report on the bond deal, the SriLankan Airlines chairman’s curious comments on the Weliamuna report and efforts to brush it away and cover up allegations against the then CEO and more,  somehow involve  members of the FRCS of more recent vintage.

Attempts to protect Arjuna Mahendran by appointing a three-member inquiry committee connected in one way or another with the UNP and appointees with no experience in the subject of Central Bank finance and other relevant qualifications also came from the same  circle of former schoolmates and friends. Who appointed them to inquire? Is it the same people who have tried their best to delay any impartial inquiry into the bond deals so shortly after the new government was formed and still continue to foist a cover up on the country?

Why would the President appoint a commission of inquiry that is a mere fact-finding mission and is only looking into whether procedures were strictly followed and has no punitive power to deal with any wrongdoers or manipulators of the system?

Even more intriguing is why such an innocuous commission of inquiry was appointed which will only help delay an outcome and accountability on what the media refer to as the Bond Scam when there is a law passed by Parliament in 1987 that could deal with any wrongdoing without this procrastination charade being perpetrated on the country.

Going through old newspaper clippings of some of my writings I came across a lead story or splash in the Sunday Observer I wrote way back on 29th January 1989. The headline was “Panel to examine State contracts” and referred to the Public Contracts Act (PCA) passed by Parliament in early 1987.
The opening sentence in that story read: “All public tenders and contracts over five million rupees will soon be examined by a panel to ensure that the awards are above board and corruption free.”

The report said the government will shortly activate the PCA and set out the reasons for the delay. It said the Act permits the Executive President to “set up a Tribunal to investigate any contract other than those he exempts in the interest of the national economy.”

To reactivate the law the government was expected to pass regulations under the act which will allow a continuous examination of public tenders by a panel that will act as a standing committee and not only those tenders that will be referred to it from time to time. Space does not permit the repetition of some other details I had mentioned in that report. But what is surely interesting is that such law passed by Parliament is in our statute books and so a new law to scrutinise government tenders which has been the subject of perennial disputes and controversy is not required

Surely there are enough people in government, lawyers and officials, who should be aware of this act. There should be those in the Presidential Secretariat who should know about it because it deals with powers vested on the President. Those in the Prime Minister’s Office, the Justice Ministry and many other state institutions should be aware of it. In fact, some of the present leaders were in Parliament at the time.

Yet nobody has mentioned a word of this existing law. Why? That is the crucial question. Is it because to bring this to public attention would only hinder their own future plans to dip into state resources?

In that same report I refer to a recent Assets Bill under which all those in public office including elected representatives have to declare their assets and those of close family members.

Moreover President Premadasa had entrusted Trade and Shipping Minister Lalith Athulathmudali, who had initially proposed the activation of the Public Contracts Act, to draft a Code of Conduct for MPs which he had done after studying similar codes in several countries.

With a PCA in the statute books and a Code of Conduct already drafted why has this Government been  struggling — or so we are told — to eliminate corruption in public life and has failed to pass the Code of Conduct for MPs?

Are these continuing attempts to sweep instances of corruption in public life under the carpet? The UNP’s self-promotion has projected it as a “clean”. Many of us have heard that. What it needs now is a damned-good dry clean.