In the first instance, it illustrates the impunity with which these acts of deliberate savagery are being carried out by individuals, whom auditors allege, are officials working in those same ministries who want the audit investigations stopped. Secondly, the acid attack on Mr Arambewela, which has left him fighting for his life with total damage of his left eye and extensive damage to his lungs and liver, does not appear to have excited any noticeable degree of public comment.

Though audit officers picketed during the week and police investigations are continuing, this seems the sum total of all that has resulted in our conscience dead society.
Meanwhile, one individual lies in hospital with his life in ruins because he was more courageous than most. One wonders what the moral of this story is. Quite apart, that is, from the well known fact that in Sri Lanka individual integrity has become highly expendable, deserving only a stray newspaper headline.

Particular aspects about what happened to Mr Arambewela are startling in their impact. Indeed, they are matters on which public agitation should focus as a textbook illustration of what is wrong with our country. Mere apprehension of those who threw the acid at him, if indeed they are ever apprehended is wholly insufficient. It is only in this manner that the cycle of impunity can be arrested so that at least, what happened to Mr Arambewela will operate as some kind of a deterrent in the future.

Mr Arambewela was investigating particular frauds in the Provincial Education Ministry which amounted to nearly 40 million rupees in total, including defective purchases and bribes paid to officers.

These were irregularities which had bypassed the internal auditor of the ministry and indeed, had been taken cognizance of by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and in regard to which the Chief Education Secretary and the Provincial Education Director had been noticed to appear before the PAC this coming week.

Mr Arambewela had also been forthright on the question of wholesale abuse of state vehicles during the December elections However, despite these irregularities being brought to the attention of the Ministry and above, punitive action was slow in coming.
On the contrary, officers who had been interdicted received reprieves with one officer reinstated (despite pending inquiry) and others sent on retirement. Auditors have identified these investigations by Mr Arambewela as the root cause for the specific attack on him.

Even more astonishingly, it is reported that a high official in the ministry had instructed staff not to release files or information to audit officers without his permission. Meanwhile, despite Mr Arambewela receiving threatening phone calls prior to the attack and despite a specific request for police protection, this had been disregarded, leaving him wholly vulnerable to the attack. The questions therefore are many.

How was it that officials who had been interdicted for corruption had been reinstated or retired? Whence this direction by a "high official" not to release information to audit officials, effectively subverting the purpose of an audit inquiry? Why was it that no notice was taken of the complaint made by Mr Arambewela despite the highly sensitive context in which that complaint was made and should not the OIC of that station take personal responsibility for such?

In the ultimate analysis therefore, it is not only those depraved individuals who actually threw the acid who ought to be caught and punished but all those along the line whose omissions as well as commissions led to this man being punished for trying to do his job well.

Meanwhile, the incident and the events leading up to it illustrates the great disparity in Sri Lanka between the law and the reality and in addition, particular defects in the law relating to the office of the Auditor-General itself. The Auditor-General is given special sanctity by the Constitution and the powers relative thereto in ensuring financial probity are set out in specific detail.

A number of financial regulations, in addition, lay down procedures relating to the control of public finance. The audit of accounts of the central government and the provinces rests with the central government and necessarily with the staff of the Auditor-General. These officers are given power to have access to all books, records and returns and are entitled to be furnished with information and explanations that are necessary for the performance of duties and functions.

The Auditor-General is required to report to Parliament on the performance and discharge of these duties and functions within ten months after the close of each financial year.

The constitutional provisions and the procedures laid out in the financial regulations appear, at first glance to provide substantive protection to officers of the office of the Auditor- General. The regulations specify that all chief accounting officers and accounting officers should ensure that every assistance is given to audit officers and see that audit queries are not only properly investigated but also that defects are promptly corrected. Where an audit officer raises audit queries, it is provided that at least an interim report should be prepared if a final reply is not immediately forthcoming.
An officer meanwhile is made personally responsible for any loss caused to the government by his or her own delay, negligence, fault or fraud and is requited therefore to make good that loss. It is important that the regulations state that if the Auditor General's Report reveals any financial irregularity on the part of a public officer, then it is mandatory that disciplinary action is taken against such officer by way of a formal inquiry with or without a preliminary investigation as the case may be.

It is also provided that the internal audit units should operate independently of the ministries and departments. The one continuing lacuna appears to be however that the law and the regulations do not prescribe adequate punitive punishment for public officers who fail to attend audit inquiries or refuse to divulge necessary information. Regardless, this is the theory which sets out a sufficiently impressive financial regulatory regime.
In what happened in the Central Province Education Ministry however, we see the exact converse of whatever safeguards that exist taking place.

The end result was that a senior representative of the Auditor-General had acid thrown at him in Kandy last week despite this constitutional protection of the office that he was representing while a police complaint that he made regarding possible threats on his life did not receive much attention. As this column is written therefore, Mr Arambewela who is a familied man with two daughters, is engaged in his own intensely personal struggle for life. Compared to the law and to the Constitution, this then, is the overriding injustice.

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