Editorial

In a country where even foreign loans and aid are not properly recorded in the official books according to the Auditor General, the monitoring of this week’s announcement that each presidential candidate is allowed to spend a maximum of Rs. 1.8 billion, or Rs. 109 per registered voter, will be next to impossible.

The Elections Commission (EC) arrived at this figure by a mathematical formula, or a ‘sutra’ that is not made public, after consulting parties and candidates in the race for the September 21 election.

In the United States, the Federal Election Campaign Act has restrictions on campaign funds. Most of the donations must be by cheque or bank draft, including electronic transfer, not cash. Expenses should be meticulously maintained, allowing only for usual staff expenses and a petty cash account for anything less than USD 100 to one person. Candidates spend vast sums on lawyers and accountants to keep proper records. These days, crypto firms have begun funding candidates with enormous sums, providing new challenges for monitoring political influence in Washington.

In South Asia, cash comes in envelopes or gunny sacks. Foreign embassies sometimes also look to influence the outcome of an election by funding the party of their choice.

Some years back, bags of cash apparently from a West Asian country were left at a residence in Rosmead Place, Colombo, before an election. Later, when that country got into financial difficulties, the Sri Lankan Government (the ruling party being the recipient of those bags) waived the rent from the embassy that was occupying a government bungalow.

The IOUs some countries expect to encash if their horse wins the Presidential Derby, however, are far more diabolic.

In the only case that went the full distance to disqualify an elected member of ‘bribing’ the voter, the Moneragala High Court in 2021 upheld the complaint of a losing candidate at the 2018 local council elections. The complainant was supported by election monitors. The Pradeshiya Sabha member had left his fingerprints all over, and the complainant utilised the Right to Information law to access documents to prove that the elected member from the then ruling party had got the Electricity Board (CEB) and Water Board to give connections to voters during election time—paid for by one of his ‘agents’.

It was hailed as a landmark case and a warning to future candidates.

Nothing really followed from that court order to tighten campaign irregularities. This week, the Prime Minister noted the ongoing election campaign is seeing a lot of money laundering—an open acknowledgement of an open secret—that setting limits on campaign funding and expenditure is an extravagant exaggeration.

A domestic affair

Not all Australian courts are kangaroo courts. A Sri Lankan cricketer was able to defend himself from a woman who tried to ‘cash in’ on something for herself in an Australian court. Though subjected to public humiliation for his purported crime, he was acquitted after the judge heard his side.

It is now the turn of a Sri Lankan diplomat, one of the best in the Foreign Service, to face humiliation—a victim of circumstances beyond her control.

The recent judgment against the diplomat delivered by an Australian court for non-payment of her domestic’s proper wages while serving in Canberra has extra-legal connotations. The salary the diplomat’s domestic staffer was entitled to under Australian labour laws could have been equivalent to what she herself was entitled to as her wages by her employer.

What other countries facing similar dilemmas have done with such cases is to provide the domestic an ‘official passport’ and claim her services, thereby coming under the Vienna Convention. Sri Lanka hasn’t adopted that practice, probably not wanting to stretch the Convention to such tensile limits.

The economically better-off countries view labour and pay in a jaundiced way, a mismatch in the context of the real world. There is also an element of duplicity in all of this. Western entrepreneurs go to countries in the economically poor South not for altruistic reasons but for their cheap labour. The products, from motor vehicles to electronic items to branded garments, are lapped up by consumers in these richer countries—the North.

The Australian Government is actively engaged in an effective collaboration on anti-human trafficking to prevent people from coming to Australia by boat. A huge programme of naval cooperation has been ongoing, with advertisements in local media warning of the consequences. It seems there is no provision, however, to protect foreign diplomats from domestics abusing regular channels to gain asylum status through religious groups and law firms in that country.

Not accustomed to having domestic help themselves, there is a mistaken perception that live-in domestics cook, house-clean and wash the clothes of their masters and mistresses 24/7. If hot cooking oil falls on their hands, superficial or accidental effects are made out as torture when appealing for asylum status.

In terms of the capacity to earn, pay and purchase, the world is an unequal and asymmetric place. In a case like this, it is wholly inappropriate to evaluate the pay scales of a developing country in terms of scales applicable in a normal workplace of a developed country. More so, when the staffer is a live-in assistant provided with food, accommodation, medical care, etc.

The court order does not take into account the motive of the complainant nor the clearly organised ‘operation’ behind the exercise by an organisation with a religious bent. The judge limited herself to the legal facts presented, with no challenge to them—unlike in the case of the cricketer.

While this is not the first such case involving a developing country, it may not be the last so long as these disparities and deficits prevail and interest groups continue to aid and abet. Developed countries are not unaware of the extent to which individuals exploit all available channels, including asylum channels, encouraged by other interested parties, to fabricate allegations to benefit from alternate routes to legal migration.

With Sri Lanka itself, with its ‘back to the wall’ on the economic front, struggling to give pay hikes to its workers at home, the Foreign Ministry needs to review and adapt its rules and regulations to ensure both workers’ rights and the good name of the country, and its diplomats are consistent with Sri Lankan and relevant international laws, not the domestic practices of the host country.

This entire episode brings to surface the larger issue of the North-South economic divide, and the absurdity of sovereign equality in an unequal world.