Where postings go by favour

Reeling from scathing attacks over the increasing filling of diplomatic posts with political and even family appointees, Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama appears to have swung to the other extreme this week dishing out remaining assignments to career officers as they wished, bypassing the hitherto time tested Transfer Board method.

Critics charged that it boiled down to reducing the career service to a fiefdom, where those who suck up to the Minister are given plum posts and others are banished to unsuitable domains in his realm. After Wednesday’s doling out of assignments, there appears to be no takers for stations considered ‘unsavoury’ like Dhaka, Katmandu, Hanoi and Pretoria.

Though the Transfer Board system was not perfect, sources said it took decisions based on relative merits, but now it is heading in a direction of a system that tries to please those who would run behind the Minister. It is reliably learnt that some in the service who were not in agreement with this ad hoc new policy of the Minister had simply kept away from the meeting early this week where the new assignments were given for the asking. Even Foreign Secretary Palitha Kohona had been a notable absentee at this novel selection session, they said.

Prior to this, sources said, Dr Kohona had proposed a scheme where career Foreign Service officers were required to submit applications to obtain foreign postings, but that had been overruled by Minister Bogollagama. Both the Minister and the Secretary were not available for comment at the time of going to press.