Editorial

A news item in the front page of this newspaper last week has raised not just eyebrows, but alarm bells within and even outside the public service. It referred to SLIDA (Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration) taking over the conducting of examinations for recruitment and promotions in the public sector, from the Examinations Department.

With the public service already under siege by continuing politicisation over the years, and now the creeping induction of retired military officers into high posts in the public sector, the demoralisation of government officials has already set in, big time.

The British established the Ceylon Civil Service in line with what they had in their country. It was considered highly prestigious and it was the best of fresh graduates straight from universities who would join the CCS. Though sometimes ridiculed as ‘pen pushers’ whose ‘Bible’ was the ARs (Administrative Regulations) and FRs (Financial Regulations), it was known they had no partisan politics, moreover, they were clever and scrupulously honest.

Later, the CCS became known as the SLAS (Sri Lanka Administrative Service). Men and women continued to enrol through merit-based all-island examinations to the public service that was the backbone of administering the country. They were competent recruits who served throughout the country, rising to the challenge of handling emergencies like riots, food shortages, droughts, floods and other natural disasters with efficiency.

An independent Public Service Commission protected them from injustices and arbitrary treatment. But it wasn’t too long after that politicians just could not resist the urge to politicise the bureaucracy, break its independence, dismantle its structure and with it, drag down the very service it provided the country.

Countries like India, however, have retained the structure of the public service — in all three key domains — i.e. Public Administration (IAS), Police (IPS) and the Foreign Service (IFS). Today, these three services are as solid as ever. They even have a Forest Service. Competition is intense and after countrywide exams they extract the cream of the land to these services. Seldom are the complaints of ‘snakes and ladders’ promotions and demotions within the services. Sometimes called “Babudom’, the Indian bureaucracy is not to be trifled with, even by politicians. And it is they, who bind the country together in the midst of the vagaries of political winds.

The Examinations Department and SLIDA are meant to perform two different functions. The Exams Department is tasked with conducting over 350 exams ranging from open and limited competitive tests to proficiency bar exams/promotions. SLIDA is tasked with induction of trainees, capacity building of staff level public servants, an onerous assignment by itself. Despite a few aberrations over the decades it has been conducting exams, the Department’s record has been above board. Why SLIDA, which has neither the infrastructure, know-how nor the staff to hold exams is to be given this responsibility is baffling. Some think it is to give SLIDA officials cash incentives for doing extra work, but the more dangerous inference is that again, politicians want to make further inroads into the recruitment and promotions of mid-level public servants. It is no surprise then that the Education Minister (under whom the Examinations Department comes) who is also the chairman of the ruling party has not uttered a hum of protest at this move.

Even the legality of this move is in question. The Examinations Department conducts public examinations by an Act of Parliament. A previous attempt at the same exercise by the former Minister of Public Administration in the Yahapalana Government was shot down by the then Prime Minister on the grounds that SLIDA must do what it is supposed to do and not try to do the dogwork of others. It is really disappointing that someone’s hare-brained decision can actually get drafted into a Cabinet paper to be put up by a Minister for the consideration of his colleagues who probably do not bother to even read it.

If implemented, this will be another step by the Government to ruin further what is left of the country’s public service.

Vote bank politics: What goes around comes around

There surely must be some chuckles going around as the world’s largest democracy takes up cudgels with the world’s oldest on grounds of “interference” in its internal affairs.

British MPs slamming the Indian Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for its controversial ‘Farm policy’ has so roused the ire of the Indian Government that they have issued a formal Demarche (diplomatic protest) on the British Government. What happens in India is none of your business is what it says in plain English to their erstwhile colonial masters who left the subcontinent in 1947.

The irony is that just a few weeks ago, it was Mr. Modi who while in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu called upon Sri Lanka to implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and added that India was concerned about the rights of one of the communities in Sri Lanka. So, is what is good for the goose, good for the gander? And the still bigger contradiction is that at the UN in Geneva, India is playing hot and cold, vis-a-vis Britain spearheading a damning resolution on the internal affairs of Sri Lanka.

India is quite right in asking British MPs to mind their own business.  But a growing lobby argues that the global community has a responsibility to look into the affairs of states; i.e. the R2P (Right to Protect) philosophy, though that only favours the ‘big boys’ with muscle in international relations.

India has been liberally exercising this philosophy against all its neighbours. Recently, the Nepali Government accused India of imposing a month-long blockade of goods over constitutional reforms in Nepal. Only by getting a kick up its stern from a country of its own muscle has it cried foul.

What India says about British MPs and ‘vote bank politics’ is exactly what Sri Lanka has been saying about the buffoonery taking place in the British Parliament on Sri Lanka. It is just that Sri Lankan Governments, past and present, haven’t what it takes to summon the local envoys of these countries and teach them a few lessons on “interference”. In the UK, it all depends on how many Diaspora voters an MP has, to speak out from a draft prepared and given to them. In India’s case, it depends on whether a British MP’s constituents are Gujarati (then pro-Modi) or Punjabi (anti-Modi).

Whether in Tamil Nadu or in New Delhi, vote-bank politics is the name of the game. Now, India has got a taste of its own bitter medicine.