Columns

When, some weeks ago, a headline for one of my columns started with the words “Games they play…”, no reference was intended to Sri Lanka’s cricket on and off the field.

Though there is much to be said about our cricket, particularly when its administrators begin to show their political muscles, had our talent scouts looked farther afield, they would have discovered many more players adapting their own approach to the game that never came out from any coaching book.

The British, who reputedly invented the game and planted it in their vast empire, called it a gentlemen’s game. And it was up to a time until others took it over.

All one has to do is turn one’s eyes towards the state of play at Diyawanna Oya, not the playing fields of Eton or Reid Avenue in Colombo, and scan the kind of games that have been going on there. Over the years, the rules of play have changed depending on who has won the toss and is holding the bat at any given time.

There used to be a story of that great English batsman, W.G. Grace, who, on being given out, refused to leave the crease, saying hundreds of spectators had come to see him bat, not to see him languish in the pavilion. Had he been living today and surveying the political playing fields of Sri Lanka, he would have learnt how to ensure that he would not be given out, at least until he scored his century and, like today, pocketed enough money, one way or another.

In recent times, those who have been catapulted to high office by fortuitous circumstances—circumstances that were never anticipated when their predecessors swept into office—seem to think, like Grace, they should bat forever. So do supporters of various shades and vocations who believe that political longevity is essential to save the nation.

In pursuit of that goal, officials of the party that only a few years ago could not win a single seat in parliament—surely an undignified record for the Grand Old Party—and have now started breathing again, faithfuls and those with no other place to go, are hanging to the coattails of power and turning to those old books of tricks that the GOP, particularly since the mid-1970s under the J.R. Jayewardene dispensation, became widely known for, in the hope of that longevity.

That, alas, is proving to be more of a disgrace than Grace, for the intention is clear. One might talk incessantly of the Caucasian Chalk Circle while fellow travellers and hangers-on, some of whom have never heard of Brecht or his play, sing hallelujahs to a self-proclaimed Grusha. The consequence of all this political and constitutional jugglery is to deny the citizens of Sri Lanka the right to exercise their franchise gained close to a century ago.

Meanwhile, those exercising power and influence from top to bottom, officially or otherwise, will continue in their merry way, amassing wealth and expanding their family coffers in nefarious ways, so that when this country reaches that professed golden era in 2048, their progeny, if not they, could sit proudly among the world’s leading nations, flaunting the ill-gotten gains.

Two recent events prompted this particular commentary. Just as I was about to write this, I noticed a media report that awoke very recent memories about the attempt to drag a visitor to Sri Lanka to the police for raising loud objections at the BIA over new entry-visa rules that required tourists to pay a much larger fee than before. Fortunately, that stupidity was later dropped.

That scheme run by a foreign consortium apparently had not been publicised, taking many visitors by surprise.

Handing over of this project without calling for tenders as it should have been and the so-called investment by the consortium of some 200 million dollars immediately raised the concerns of the chairman of the Parliament’s Committee on Public Finance (COPF), the sharp-eyed Harsha de Silva, who seemed to smell more than one rat in the woodpile.

However, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles and his seeming hatchet man, Commissioner General of Immigration, Harsha Ilukpitiya, who, you might remember, cut a sorry figure in the Diana Gamage trial, vigorously defended the project, saying there was no need to call for tenders because the consortium was the best of the best, which Dr. Harsha de Silva did not buy.

In what amounts to a damning report, chairman de Silva has said that the findings of the CoPF call for immediate action by the Auditor-General and added that the lack of certain specifications made to bid for a tender causes concerns about “procedural integrity”.

The Committee has even called for this controversial deal to be abrogated or revised and the deal to be forensically audited.

This, to say the least, is a serious indictment on those involved, never mind who. In most other countries, those responsible for such a deal would have resigned at least until investigations were held and the result cleared them, if at all.

But in Sri Lanka, such official conduct is not new. Those who have followed Sri Lankan political behaviour, especially at the highest levels of the government, over the years know only too well that dubious activities, particularly with regard to the offering and conferring of government tenders, have been going on for years.

Only last year, the IMF, in its 16-point Governance Diagnostic Report, called for various actions, including the declaration of assets and liabilities from the highest in office to the lowest levels, to be made available to the public, action against bribery and corruption, and punitive steps that would contain this cancer that has eaten into the bowels of the nation and is a long-standing bane in the country that is widely known the world over.

Our leaders praise the IMF because it granted another tranche, made positive noises about the economic recovery in progress and provided some background applause at the results of the debt restructuring. But when it comes to implementing recommendations that are vital for clearing the decks for clean governance and acting against corruption and bribery, the government is often strangely silent.

Oh, our leaders will gloat over having passed some 75 new laws in parliament. The problem is like taking horses to water. You cannot make them drink, especially not our horses. Not all the laws in the world will cure the malaise that afflicts our nation, if those mandated with the task of implementing them shirk their duties and responsibilities, some because they themselves are in the thick of the bloody rackets.

If convicted persons can be made ministers and serve in the cabinet, and another named rightly or wrongly by the ambassador from one of the country’s major aid donors of soliciting can continue to hold office, there sure is a need for some political spring cleaning if what the IMF spoke about is to be curtailed if not ended.

I intended to add to this UK’s Code of Conduct for Ministers and the manner in which an official inquiry held by a senior official found Prime Minister Boris Johnson guilty of violating some rules of conduct and caused his resignation, but lack of space prevented it.

But that is in countries where codes of conduct for ministers and MPs are seriously observed and violations are effectively dealt with.

But in Sri Lanka, to adapt the words of the well-known Frank Sinatra song, they do it their way.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)