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IMF puts the shoe on Govt’s foot: demands, ‘get your act together’
View(s):- Holds second tranche in suspense till ‘good governance’ gets underway
After 12 months of piling taxes on the public with impunity on the supposed ground that IMF conditions required financial discipline be introduced to the economy, the Government awoke last week to find the IMF had placed the shoe on its own foot, and put the clamp on its footloose and fancy-free revelling style of governance.
For months on end, the Government, repeating the ‘economy, economy, economy’ mantra ad nauseam, heaped taxes after taxes on a down-and-out despairing people who hardly could endure another back-breaking feather of increase. It was done with almost a gloat as if the people were responsible for the economic sins they were suffering from and were getting what they deserved, when, in actual fact, it was due to successive government failures to keep a tight reign on its own spending spree while pouring tax earnings into their own corruption drains.
Now the government has been asked to tighten its belt on corruption, to crack down the indiscipline in public expenditure and told to make the necessary sacrifice — as the people have been told so often — for the sake of the country. Sixteen commands have been made, each with a deadline set which must be met. All of them are aimed towards strengthening accountability and the rule of law. And to enhance transparency.
The mantra that will now appease IMF gods and make them cast their monetary blessings for Lanka to rise from its nadir is not ‘economy, economy, economy’ recited ad nauseam but ‘accountability and rule of law’ said 16 times on the IMF rosary.
For starters, the IMF insists that before November 23 of this year the Government must set up an Advisory Committee composed of independent experts on anticorruption to assist in the nomination of CIABOC Commissioners — the Bribery and Anti-corruption Commission –and the Director General.
It has called upon the Government to ‘finalise and implement to support the provision of beneficial ownership information as required by the Companies Act and to establish a public beneficial ownership registry by April next year.’ This is aimed at exposing the black money that’s behind the share certificates and to prevent the use of corruption’s spoils being laundered and turned clean.
Among the 16 conditions set for the Government to meet is the requirement to enact a Public Procurement Law that reflects international good practice by December next year, and to publish in December 2024, a report on ‘progress in increasing the proportion of tendered competitive procurement contracts in the 10 agencies determined to have the lowest level of competitive tenders in 2022’. Another condition is to ‘institute short-term measures within each revenue department to strengthen internal oversight and sanctioning processes and linkages with CIABOC and related criminal investigation and enforcement processes by December 2023 and issue a public report on steps taken and results obtained by December 2024.’
But the condition that will be understood most by 213 out of 225 members in Parliament and worry them most and give rise to sleepless nights and make the cabinet shiver, is IMF’s second demand, ‘Publication of Asset Declaration for senior officials (President, Prime Minister, Minister) on a designated website in line with Anticorruption Law by July 2024.
Hitherto under the Declaration of Assets and Liabilities Law, first enacted in 1978, they are required to declare their assets to the Speaker who keeps it stored in his safe, with the Attorney General, Bribery Commissioner, the Commissioner of Inland Revenue and a few other designated officials having the right to call for and refer to it. The Act also allows any person to refer and take certified copies on the payment of a few.
The snag is that only 12 MPs in this Parliament have made the statutory declaration with the rest of the 213 turning a blind eye to the need.
This was revealed by SJB MP Harsha de Silva who told Parliament last Thursday that only 12 out of the 225 members of Parliament have published their assets and liabilities to date. He said that ‘members declining to publish their assets and liabilities could be disturbing in the aftermath of the IMF focusing on corruption in its governance diagnostic assessment on Sri Lanka’.
But now MPs face the prospect of their declared wealth and debt available on the web for any Tom, Dick or Harriet to freely read at the press of a digit on their smartphones. The MPs may now demand the proposed damning ‘online safety’ bill to be made far worse.
Although Peter Breuer, Senior Mission Chief for Sri Lanka at the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, was careful to say ‘there are no fixed timelines’ he focused on two areas which he said must be satisfied. One was targets, policies and reforms, the other was debt.
He said: ‘We need to reach agreement on set targets, policies, and reforms that will allow us to go forward… with the understanding that the objective of the programme can be reached. So, now we have discovered there was a little bit of shortfall on one area during this year. So, we are looking to try and find ways to address that shortfall and compensate’. On the debt issue, he said that ‘reaching agreement with creditors will help restore debt sustainability in Sri Lanka’. He said the final decision will lie with the Executive Board.
Another IMF team is expected to visit Sri Lanka this week. Minister Rajapakshe told the media that the team would hold extensive discussions on the second tranche presently held in suspense.
With the IMF shoe now on the Government’s foot and the onus on its head, it behoves the nation’s leaders to get cracking with the Herculean task of cleaning the Aegean Stables.
| Namal says: A father cannot pass presidential baton to sonNamal Rajapaksa, whose four-year outstanding electricity bill of Rs 2.6 million was paid at last by Puttalam’s Sanath Nishantha last Monday, declared this week that the people could not expect a president to pass on the baton to his son and make him the next President of the country. Is that so? What a revolutionary idea? If it had been said ten years ago during his father’s regime people would have been jailed for blasphemy and strung up for treason.  DREAMS DIE HARD: Mahinda, in the halcyon days of his rein, grooming son and adding the finishing touches of how to don the Rajapaksa purple with flamboyant flair Addressing the media at the SLPP headquarters in Battaramulla on Tuesday, he told reporters: ‘It is something for the party to decide who will be their presidential candidate. A presidential father cannot gift the presidency to his son.’ Of course not. Where on earth had he got the idea that anyone thought his father could? That Mahinda Rajapaksa was able to pass on the crown and sceptre to Namal and could and would anoint him, his eldest son, as his chosen successor to the Lankan throne? The divine right to rule and hereditary succession as enjoyed by kings of yore have long since vanished; and for the last 208 years had been nonexistent in the Lankan political landscape. But following the terrorist war’s triumphant end in 2009, had the brief hour of glory and the fleeting hero worship which had all but crowned him, evoked in Mahinda megalomaniacal visions of a Rajapaksa dynastical rule for the next thousand years; with Presidential immunity for every succeeding heir as an updated version of monarchial absolution which had given Lanka’s kings till 1815, absolute power to torture people to their deaths in ten most heinous ways? Had these delusional visions of grandeur pervaded the air at his Medamulana household that it had made Namal suffer the belief he had been born to rule? And when the day dawns ‘No more Mahinda’, it will be ‘Long Live Namal’. But his father still retained a straw of his cherished dynastical hope when he reportedly told a visiting team of SLPP’s Romanian branch officials this week, ‘I will not oppose him becoming President.’ So, when Namal made the rhetorical statement to reporters at the press conference that ‘ a president cannot pass the baton to his son’, was it merely to confirm that his dreams had been shattered and his hopes wrecked? Sorry Namal. The right royal horse-drawn carriage you thought would come someday, will not arrive for you for such a carriage doesn’t exist. The best-laid plans of sire and son have already been disposed of by the sovereign people of Lanka. They now demand their leaders must be schooled and skilled to rule. The country is no longer the Rajapaksa family firm. MP lands on his tail after high jump to Govt ranks Party-trotting former Sri Lanka Muslim Congress MP Nazeer Ahmed who made his leap across the Parliamentary divide to summer in the Government’s more advantageous climes, discovered last week that he had landed on his back instead. Two years ago, he had crossed over to the Government backbenches and, at the third reading of the budget, had voted with the Government against the decision of the SLMC’s High Command that its party members should only vote against or abstain. He had done so even after he had signed a document pledging his loyalty to the constitution, rules and regulations of the SLMC.  NAZEER AHMED: Faces bleak environment The apparent reward for his betrayal came in May the following year when he was appointed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa as Minister of Environment with dubious qualifications to hold this important post since any large project, foreign or local, had to be first approved by him to take off. On October 6, the Supreme Court ruled that the SLMC‘s expulsion of Nazeer Ahmed was valid and held that he was disqualified to retain his Parliamentary seat. Delivering the judgement Justice P. Padman Surasena held: ‘The Petitioner (Nazeer Ahmed) has pledged that he would be loyal to the Party; shall recognize honour and submit to the authority of the hierarchy of the Party; abide by and honour its decisions, rules, regulations, directives, policies of the Party as decided by the High Command. But the Petitioner has not only breached this solemn pledge but also has deliberately refrained from giving any explanation for his conduct. He has also determined not to submit himself to the authority of the Party. In those circumstances and for the foregoing reasons, I hold that the decision made by the SLMC to expel the Petitioner from the party by letter P15 dated 23 is valid in law.’ As a result, he’s out of Parliament, and he stands today, though with an enriched sun tan that has visibly improved his complexion, without the office of Environment Minster, without his Parliamentary seat, without a party to call his own. He stands alone as a political outcast, held in utmost contempt and scorn. Unless he is embraced by the SLPP and taken to its bosom and his political death in their camp makes them hold him a martyr to the Rajapaksa faith, no other party would touch this political pariah with a political barge pole. He stands as an example to others who have bartered their souls for sunnier pastures to increase their tans. The Supreme Court’s landmark unanimous judgment will also have far-reaching effects on those who had similarly crossed over to the sunlit side of the street where a calypso carnival of power, perks and privileges reigns. No doubt they will be praying to the higher power above not to let the music stop. ‘Stop the war immediately’: Wimal to Israel and Hamas Hopes for an early end to the raging Israel-Hamas conflict which broke out last week, have risen from the Eastern horizon after a South Asian firebrand politician issued an ultimatum to the two warring forces to immediately halt the war. Despite losing domestic power after being disposed two years ago by a 6.9 million elected President, the charismatic Wimal Weerasinghe — as he likes to believe and dream — has continued to dominate the world stage with his powerful rhetoric and sweeping influence that still command the respect and attention of Monarchs and Presidents alike worldwide.  WIMAL: Make love not war Emerging from his Lankan peephole on Thursday for a few brief minutes to meet the press, he issued his order to the two historical foes and warned that their bloody war threatened world peace and economic order and called on them to melt their tanks and missiles and turn it into ploughshares. Or words to that effect if read between the lines contained in his profound address. He said: ‘The entire world as a whole will have to bear the bleak results, all humanity will have to suffer.’ Cynics asked: Will his message succeed when world leaders have failed to bring a truce? Who knows? His words might bring a tear to the hate-filled Hamas eye and make the Israelis realise the folly of an ‘eye for an eye’. That hate and revenge can only cease by turning the other cheek and loving thy neighbour as Jesus preached. Though the miracle of a mouse’s squeak has never happened before to bring world peace, there’s always a first time. Time and chance happeneth to all. He could have ended the Ukraine war with a snap of a finger but as a rule of thumb he holds all those behind the Kremlin wall as his gods and his gods can do no wrong. As novelist Ernest Hemingway said: ‘Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead’. As long as hope exists, give peace a chance.
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