Thoughts from London

Sri Lanka deserves a new political culture
By the time this column appears Sri Lanka would have a new president.
Who it is does not matter for our immediate purpose.

Whether Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse has picked up the mantle of president or former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is the new incumbent of president’s house is important only insofar as the new leader is prepared to create a new political culture in the country and rids the land of decades of abuse and misuse of power by the elected and selected.

Too long have the people suffered under the jackboots of politicians, their kith and kin and officials picked for loyalty instead of efficiency.
Too long have they been denied justice as the powerful and privileged have made use of political and state power to crush legitimate grievances and just causes.

If ever Sri Lanka is to rise from the moral morass into which it has fallen, largely due to the failure of successive political leaderships to set standards of conduct, the new president must begin by establishing a code of behaviour that should be strictly enforced.
Not just for him alone but for ministers, parliamentarians and all those holding public office.

Then and only then could Sri Lanka take the first steps in trying to cleanse public life of the corruption, the misuse and abuse of power and the intimidatory and coercive conduct that have gradually eaten into the very fabric of our society like a canker.
Any wise leader who is not stirred only by the thirst for and glory of power and who wishes to be remembered after he is long gone would begin to lay the foundations for a just, equitable and benevolent society.

That task should necessarily begin with setting stringent standards of conduct for oneself and one’s ministers and officials. No leader should expect standards of behaviour from the people that he and the political leadership are themselves not willing to adhere to.
It is easy to make these promises before elections and immediately after a public has voted one into power naively believing such promises would be kept.

Those who lived in Sri Lanka in the late 1970s when the then UNP led by Junius Richard Jayewardene promised to rescue the country from the SLFP and convert it into a “dharmishta” society will remember how dharmishta it really was.

How much faith and hope people placed in the promises that Jayewardene and the UNP leadership made at the time. Yet within a couple of years of that long parliament the promised dharmishta society had become adharmishta as cronyism, nepotism, intimidation and corruption became endemic and the leadership looked the other away.
Even simple codes of conduct for ministers and MPs were abused. Those acquainted with the times might remember what a song and dance the Junius Jayewardene government made about public discipline including the consumption of alcohol.

The government laid down the law. Only one minister was to attend diplomatic “National Day” receptions. UNP MPs were told not to attend such receptions while officials were banned from doing so.
This was pure eyewash or as the Sinhala saying goes mere “es bandung”. As the months rolled into years JR’s much publicised code was being flouted before our very eyes and MPs and officials found at such receptions guzzling diplomatic booze would be cynical about the whole exercise.

Some might even remember that to stop public servants and others drinking during office hours instead of attending to their work, the UNP government ordered that bars should close for three or four hours in the afternoon. What actually happened was that those who should be in office stayed behind the closed doors of city bars and drank until the doors opened again. So those who would return to work in the afternoons did not go at all.

Almost 30 years later public life has deteriorated even further and bribery and corruption, nepotism and thuggery have begun to dominate public life.
Is Sri Lanka to continue along this degrading path into an amoral society where anything and everything is permissible and corruption at the top seeps through to the lower echelons of the political establishment, bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies, or is a new leader willing to risk immediate unpopularity to lay the foundations for a moral society?
Unless something untoward happens a president could continue for 12 years if he has popular support. If he undertakes the cleansing of public life, not just by word but by deed, a grateful public will surely support him for a second term.

This is a decision that the new leader has to make. Is he going to compensate his close supporters, his kith and kin and his friends who contributed to his electoral success by providing them with state and government jobs and open the doors for his ministers and others to accumulate wealth by dubious means or will he have the moral stature to initiate change?

The public has heard enough of election pledges and the trail of broken promises thereafter. The new president will be judged also by the effective and strong measures he takes to rid society of political and official abuse and misuse of power.

It is unfortunate that often when our politicians and bureaucrats adopt laws and practices followed in foreign countries they tend to pick the worst or turn them into their own advantage.
So the best of practices go ignored because to adopt them would curtail one’s powers of abuse and means of making money clandestinely and not so secretly.

For the last 10 years Britain has had an Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards which was set up following recommendations made by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Apart from the wide powers given to an independent Commissioner to investigate alleged breaches of the Code of Conduct for MPs and the Guide to Rules of Conduct relating to MPs and reporting such findings to the Committee, there is also a Code of Conduct for Ministers and their special advisers.
Moreover registers are maintained where ministers, MPS, Lords, members’ secretaries and even research assistants must declare their interests and their financial earnings and any dealings.

The same day our elections were held the British media carried news stories on declarations made by ministers and members in the registers.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, revealed that he had taken free upgrades from Virgin Atlantic on flights to Washington, New York and Sydney for his wife and baby.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and wife Cherie disclosed that they spent 26 nights as guests of Sir Cliff Richards in his Barbados Villa.
Were our ministers, MPs and others in public life to declare their interests and everything they have taken free how many volumes of registers would be required and how much more juicy stories and scandals would be revealed?

Ministers and MPs have had to resign and leave in ignominy for violating the Code of Conduct. Our politicians and officials would only be moved out of their positions with bulldozers.
That is all the more reason why a new president should wipe the slate clean and bring some accountability, transparency and moral authority into political life.

Now is the time to start. Learn from the debacles of the past. Act even against the closest if he or she has brought the presidency into disrepute.
Certainly it will take time to prepare legislation. But there are examples to turn to and if action needs to be taken even against a minister do so without fear or favour. The people at large will strongly back a president with the courage to do so even if he loses a friend or two trying.

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