Editorial

It will be one month next week since Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe took his oaths again after the bizarre events that followed the October 26, 2018 decision to sack him. Meanwhile, a large number of state-funded institutions, from statutory bodies to corporations to banks, remain headless.

The President’s capricious indiscretion that led to the Constitutional crisis is not yet dusted. It reverberates to date. The uncertainty that had the Administration grind to a virtual standstill, is continuing to limp along.

Reports are now emerging into the public domain about the crisis in the import of life-saving pharmaceutical drugs as one example of the disruption of the Administration in the latter part of last year. That situation arose due to state banks refusing to finance Letters of Credit for more than Rs. 500 million. The Bank of Ceylon, the country’s largest state run bank, for example, remains without a board.

Take the US$ 470 million grant by the United States as a different example. This grant was to be signed on December 18, 2018 under the Millennium Challenge programme to assist private sector growth through the Private-Public Partnership (PPP) initiative of the UNF Government, but had to be put off due to the uncertainty at home. Now that Sri Lanka is ready to sign the agreement, the US is not ready with another Executive President in that part of the world shutting down his own Government. The Colombo malaise seems to have hit Washington. The donors have now asked Sri Lanka to wait till March hoping things will settle at that end.

Last week, the President issued a fiat from his Secretariat ordering all those in the state sector to step down and all new appointees to be vetted through a Presidential Committee. Some have stepped down, and some have not. It seems a free-for-all. All new appointees are to have basic educational qualification, age limits and the Chief Executive Officers are expected to be full-time employees of the institutions to which they are appointed.

Many in the UNF Government have already cried foul accusing the President of trying to block UNF supporters filling these boards in what is either an election year (2019) or a run-up to an election year (2020).

Such criteria, more or less had already been in existence – at least on paper, in the first flush of the Yahapalana (Good Governance) Administration of 2015. It even referred to appointments being made on a “scientific basis”. A three-member committee was set up to go into appointees at the time and criteria such as age-limits, educational qualifications, disqualifying persons from being on multiple boards, and importantly, disqualifying the granting of positions to defeated candidates, were duly set in place.

Everything connected to good governance went out of the window no sooner than the vetting committee began making recommendations, especially when it rejected some names. One well-known case was the appointment of the brother of a Cabinet Minister as Chairman of the Ports Authority. The principle of appointments based on a “scientific basis” became a joke as the President approved the appointment overriding the vetting committee recommendation.

It is a reality that these good governance guidelines have their limitations in the real world. Ultimately, like all things in Sri Lanka, it whittles down to political expediency of the powers-that-be. When Ministers go and plead with the President, political considerations come into play and he fails to adhere to his own guidelines. Mind you, the guidelines of 2015 were endorsed by the Cabinet.

The new Presidential Committee does not even have the Cabinet’s approval. Not that it matters if it is allowed to act independently on Ministerial nominees, often square pegs in round holes as those whom they need to help may not fit the portfolio given to the Minister.

Though some of the UNF Ministers are up in arms at this Presidential directive, the Prime Minister maintains it is a good idea. After all, it was his own idea in 2015. But what use is it if good ideas don’t translate to good implementation? Take the case of Parliament’s High Post Committee that was supposed to vet ambassadors and others appointed to senior government posts like Ministry Secretaries.

When one looks at the calibre of some political appointees who have been sent as Sri Lanka’s envoys abroad, having sailed through the High Posts Committee with such consummate ease, one can ask the legitimate question as to what point there is in good ideas if they are just a sham in implementation. At least the Consultative Committee has stood its ground in recent times and when it invites the ire of the Executive President when he can’t have his way all the time, it only proves the committee is doing the job it was set up to do.

Expecting 100 percent compliance in the selection of political appointees to corporation boards and banks is too much to expect from politicians. The demands to cash IOUs of varying sorts to those who helped put them in their Ministerial seats are very heavy a burden to be left to the mercy of cold guidelines. Already the President has broken his own guidelines by appointing two ex-Governors to chairmanships. Some Ministers have done the same, snubbing the committee.

There is imperfection and ‘kissing will go by favour’, but at least if the good governance principle is adhered to, and the respective Ministers look for appropriate persons rather than fill the seats entirely with their supporters, some good will come from these guidelines. As much as a vetting committee, there ought to be a “scouting committee” to seek and tap apolitical experts from the private sector on short assignments to sit on boards. At one time, then UNP Chairman N.G.P. Panditharatne put an accountant at least, into each corporation board. A reader writing in to our Letters Page reminds us that many of these institutions are revenue based, and they all seem to be running at a loss.

Whatever the case may be, there is an urgent need to fill these seats because the disruption that occurred post October 26, 2018 is continuing. Some priority must be given to the critical areas and the process accelerated. The US might be able to ride through a Government shutdown, because it is largely private sector driven, but not Sri Lanka.