Editorial

The report that the new Government is preparing to recall the labour officers attached to the various Sri Lankan diplomatic missions in 14 countries, especially in West Asia and the Gulf region is disturbing, to say the least.

This is a matter that needs serious reconsideration for it involves nearly a million and a half Lankan citizens who generate a life-saving US$ seven billion foreign exchange earner (please see more details on page 2 of our Business section). In return, a mere pittance is spent for their welfare as they toil in often inhospitable conditions. The Labour Ministry claims Rs. 900 million is spent on these officers.

In addition to these labour officers, who are senior officials from the Labour Department, designated Attaches with diplomatic credentials, there are also labour officers sent by the Foreign Employment Bureau. Together, they were tasked with overseeing a host of problems migrant workers encounter ranging from incarceration at detention centres usually for overstaying their visa, harassment by employers to pay issues, and also to offer counselling and the like. A country like Saudi Arabia that has over 400,000 Sri Lankan workers has just two such officers to handle their problems, a mission impossible.

Not all of these officers did a great job. In the absence of lady officers, some even took advantage of these unfortunate souls while some were in the pockets of unscrupulous job agents. But they cannot all be painted with the same brush. Some did yeoman service beyond the call of duty with limited facilities and little support from Colombo.

Successive Governments are culpable of paying only lip service to these workers abroad treating them merely as ‘milch cows’. One Finance Minister said they should be garlanded when they return home. A proposal to have a dedicated channel for them at the airport showing the nation’s gratitude and even to give them voting rights have gone nowhere.

Now they want to withdraw what little is given for their relief and welfare without any announcement of any other project for their care in the Government’s plans.

Throwing the baby with the bath water

 Different, often contradictory statements are being mouthed by various supposed spokesmen for the new Government on the proposed Constitutional amendments.

With no draft yet on offer, those entrusted with the task of drawing up these amendments are making their views known in public at every given opportunity. How far these views are those of the Government proper is impossible to say, at this stage.

A few snippets are in the public domain. The common factor is that the 19th Amendment (19A) will be ‘thrown out’ with a 20A, and a new “One Nation; One Law” Constitution will be introduced thereafter. The fact that 19A is not one simple amendment, but a whole lot of them grouped into one is lost in the fog of political rhetoric.

There are certain amendments in 19A that can be considered, but to sweepingly suggest that 19A was the cause for the collapse of the former Government is sheer nonsense. It is the Executive Presidency and the power struggle with Parliament between two opposing parties and the inability of the two power-centres to share responsibility that caused it to be dysfunctional and lead to its inevitable downfall.

To blame it on the entirety of 19A is to deftly move the goal post away from focusing on whether the Executive Presidency should continue. 19A may have been a swap or a halfway house to the public outcry for years, no less from those in the seats of office today, that the Executive Presidency does not work in Sri Lanka and needed to be abolished in-toto.

It was seen as an authoritarian system of Government, though others argued that the country needed “strong leadership” not subject to the whims and vagaries of Parliamentary majorities. The arguments depended on which side of the political divide they came from. Today, there is a deafening silence over the issue.

The issue was basically an urban demand. The rural heartland probably agrees with the poet Pope that “for forms of government let fools contest; that which is best administered is best”. It doesn’t, however, mean that ‘checks and balances’ 19A has are mere footnotes to governance – it is the central point of Democracy (please see interview of departing HRC Chairperson on Page 2).

It will be interesting to see how the ‘balance of power between the Presidency and Parliament is going to be handled in the new Government. At least the incumbent in office seems to have said the right thing — that he was elected for five years and that should stay and also that two terms are sufficient for a President. And there is no logic in the President not being a Minister if he can be the head of the Cabinet.

Some other 19A provisions were taken from the US Constitution including the 35-years age rule, and dual citizenship (the US says one has to be a “natural-born citizen”), though the term of the US President is only four years.

It was clear that these provisions were incorporated into 19A to keep a certain powerful political family from returning to public office, but likewise, prospective proposals to permit dual citizens to sit in Parliament seem to be the other side of the same coin. In the entire South Asia region only Afghanistan allows this facility and that is because after the US forcibly took control of the country, Afghan citizens who took refuge in USA during Afghanistan’s Taliban years were allowed back to run a pro-US administration from Kabul. Permitting dual citizens enter Sri Lanka’s Parliament will technically permit a ‘foreigner’ enter the national legislature unless some US style safeguards are also added on even though those limitations are also fuzzy and open to interpretations.

It is hoped that the changes to the Constitution do not mean throwing the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes. Democratic advances like the independent Commissions and even the much-maligned Constitutional Council could be improved, not abolished.  This week’s appointment of a certain Minister who is facing criminal charges in court to the CC where he will have to decide on the promotion of future judges seems some kind of perfidy or a cruel irony.

Going by that appointment to the Constitutional Council this week, hopes that new provisions to the country’s Basic Law would right the wrongs of the previous Government seem dim. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope that what is being drafted is the Republic’s Constitution, and not a party Constitution.