Columns

Smuggled away in an inconspicuous media news item this week, an interesting fact surfaced regarding Sri Lanka Parliament’s Committee on Ways and Means expressing ‘strong displeasure’ over the failure of the Excise Department to collect a gargantuan tax amount of 1.8 billion rupees for 2023 from the country’s four premier distilleries before 30th June 2024.

Favoured serial tax defaulters exposed

The Committee, comprising politicians undoubtedly looking for ‘ways and means’ to carve out election-friendly platforms in the face of a hostile public, sternly reminded the Excise Department to carry out its recommendations and forthwith collect taxes due from the named distilleries. On their own part, smirking officials of the Department muttered that they had ‘written to the Ministry of Finance’ regarding ‘contradictions’ between the Committee’s recommendations and prevailing agreements for the collection of excise duty but had received no response.

Regardless, the Committee directed that the Ministry of Finance be informed to suspend licences of alcohol production companies who have not paid their excise duties for 2023. This is not the first time that the controversy of defaulting distilleries had arisen. Previously, the most recent instance was in November 2023 when the distillery licences of serial tax defaulters were suspended for non-payment of taxes. This has, in fact, become a regular pattern. And thereby hangs an evidently corrupt tale as to why and how this continues to be the case.

In fact, the (literal) million rupee question is as to why the Ministry of Finance is so coy on enforcing mandatory tax payments on a few favoured companies while its officials plead with every Perera, Silva and Appu Singho to tighten their belts? That is so despite the fact that the belts of ordinary citizens are already so tightened as to lead to starvation with one in each four persons in this country being classified as below the poverty line.

Why is the law applied selectively?

And we must not forget the laughably choreographed show recently when the Secretary to the Treasury told the President (with much obsequious head wagging and salaaming) that salary demands of striking public servants would call for an increase of value added tax from 18% to between 20%-23%. This was accompanied by the familiar drum beat that ‘significant fiscal challenges’ remain with the Government needing to ensure ‘sustainable revenue sources or other fiscal adjustments’ to meet the demand without ‘jeopardizing the IMF programme.’

All laudable sentiments, we may concede. And mind you, this is not to profess unconditional sympathy for the motley collection of striking public servants whose political affiliations are an open secret whatever we may articulate about the constitutional right to freedom of association, (which does not, we may add, include the right to indulge in lightning strikes). The lack of bona fides particularly on the part of staff of the Department of Railways who held a helpless public to ransom during the past several days, is clear.

That point acknowledged, the question remains as to whether the Finance Ministry is deaf, dumb and blind in regard to taxing the poor and not taxing the rich? The silence of Ministry panjandrums over failing to penalise defaulting liquor manufacturers with famously large purses to account is only one case in point. Other ‘scams’ and corrupt deals front-lining prominent Ministers as well as others in the closed circles of the President’s men hideously pockmark this Government’s record. That makes the head scratching of Finance Ministry officials as to how they can ensure ‘sustainable revenue sources’ rather preposterous, to say the least.

The Government’s failure in financial management

The second instance of a Parliamentary Committee report testifying to this  disturbing gap between the Wickremesinghe Presidency’s rhetoric and performance emanated from the Committee on Public Finance which disclosed that a highly controversial deal approved by the Cabinet to award a global consortium the ‘golden goose’ opportunity to process online visa services without a competitive bidding process had resulted in major financial loss to the State.  The Committee has recommended that the award to GBS-IVS, VFS Global be cancelled or revised and that the entirety be forensically audited.

In sum, these disclosures compel the Government to answer to the public on its manifest failure in ensuring financial accountability which it boasts is the objective of several new laws including on financial management, presented to the House. Absent these explanations, we may treat the pronouncements of President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Treasury officials with suitable scorn as politically choreographed dances that fail to impress Sri Lanka’s cynical and angry public.

Meanwhile, these were not the only bad theatre performances that we were privileged to witness recently. Take for instance, the much flaunted ‘yukthiya’ programme against Sri Lanka’s drug-pins which the incumbent Inspector General of Police (IGP) parades as his personal banner. After months of relentless media focus featuring the IGP and the Public Security Minister, we are told that the spread of drug crimes has been halted to at least 23% . That may be disputed by the run-of the mill police officer who is worked to death in police stations and would complain bitterly about scarce human power and resources in the Police Department being diverted to an ineffective exercise.

The ‘underworld’ and the IGP

Moreover, as if to mercilessly mock the IGP’s vainglorious pretensions, a succession of deadly ‘hits between warring gangs took place in broad daylight in Colombo and elsewhere. In one particular case that has whipped the media into a frenzy of speculation about Chicago-style ‘hits, ‘Club Wasantha’ and his companions were killed in a hail of gold plated bullets with mysterious engravings when opening a tattoo parlour in Colombo’s suburbs while a rival gang leader, ‘Loku Patty’ had apparently watched the gruesome killings live from Dubai after making ‘Tattoo’ his patsy.

A notable mafia boss Kanjipani Imran is said to be involved. Hot on the heels of that spectacle, two underworld criminals with links to multiple organised crimes were arrested and brought from Dubai to Sri Lanka. Quite apart from the hilarious noms de guerre (assumed names) by which these Lankan mobsters are hailed which put Chicago’s Al Capone to shame, the puzzle about Dubai apparently being a magnet for more than half of Sri Lanka’s criminal masterminds, remains outstanding.

That aside, the public release of a video of the questioning of ‘Tattoo’ by a senior police officer with his subordinates looking on, raises serious questions regarding the ability of the Police Department to handle investigations into the killings. That this took place while the matter is pending in Court impacts on the integrity of the relevant legal proceedings. Certainly the IGP’s issuance of ‘yet another’ circular setting out ‘standard operating procedures’ for the interrogation of suspects is not a sufficient response thereto.

Media dances versus ‘law and order’ failure

Was this ‘release’ deliberately timed to feed into the media frenzy and divert attention from obvious questions being asked as to the ‘efficacy’ of the ‘yukthiya’ programme with vicious gang wars being conducted with impunity in Sri Lanka’s public spaces? In the minimum, disciplinary action of the police officers responsible for flouting the law in releasing the video to the media must be evidenced. The IGP and the National Police Commission are duty bound to inquire into the circumstances of the release of this video footage which blatantly violates both the law and the procedure regarding the questioning of suspects.

But little can be expected from politicians and the police alike whose skill and dexterity in dancing around the law and the Constitution is perhaps their only known talent. That said, let the games continue.