The New Salvation Army of the NGOs:

A Sri Lankan Case Study (Part II)

By H. L. D. Mahindapala, Editorial Advisor to the Asian Tribune, delivered a power-point presentation to the 15th annual conference of the Asian Media, Information and Communication Center held in Penang, Malaysia from 17 - 20 July 2006. we carried part 1 of his presentation in these pages last week, and this is the continuing paper...

NGO Corruption 4

* Networking to structure inter-locking directorates has been a common ploy, partly to hold the NGOs to a single political agenda and partly to share foreign funds. For instance, it is not surprising to find a director of the National Peace Council also locked in as a director of the Centre for Policy Alternative and Sarvodya.

* This confirms that that though there are many name boards that present the illusion of diversity there is a common thread of interests linked to a single political agenda running through their NGOs linking one to another.

* Isn't this a case of birds of a feather flocking together?

Tsunami Relief Funds

* According to a Central Bank survey of all bank transactions of NGOs, 256 NGOs had received donations and other funds amounting to Rs. 40.1 bnfrom various foreign and local sources during 2005 for tsunami relief work.

* Of this 73% of total foreign remittances were received by 30 NGOs.

These 30 NGOs had withdrawn 85% of funds received in their bank accounts during the year 2005.

* The NGOs have been campaigning for some time to stop a Parliamentary investigative committee probing the questionable conduct of NGOs, particularly the use of funds and the funds allocated to some service-oriented NGOs as there are serious complaints of tsunami victims not receiving the promised aid.

* Advocacy NGOs too have come under fire for their partisan role in the Sri Lankan crisis where the northern Tamils have waged a war against the majority Sinhalese, the Tamil-speaking Muslims and the dissident Tamils of the east and elsewhere.

* Of all the NGOs the University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) (UTHR - J) -- a group targeted by the banned Tamil Tiger terrorists for daring to criticize them - has been the most outstanding and objective analysts surveying critically both sides of the Sri Lanka crisis.

* UTHR has openly castigated the Colombo-based elitist NGOs for "pussyfooting" around the issues arising from Tamil Tiger violations of human rights, crimes against humanity and war crimes, particularly abduction of children to feed the "baby brigades" of Prabhakaran.

* Most of the advocacy groups are paper tigers who have no grassroot base.

* They are self-appointed agents working to push agendas that are friendly to the foreign funding sources. They claim that they are accountable only to their foreign donors.

They do not subscribe to the view that they should be accountable to the people even though they claim to speak on their behalf. They act as if they they are a supra-state, supra-society and supra-people body sitting on top of them all.

* They import Western models to local problems without evaluating the relevancy or the applicability of their ideal models.

* They project themselves as the New Salvation Army armed with all the answers to rescue nations in peril.

* Their formulas and recipes discussed behind closed doors by like-minded ideological clones have yet to produce any substantial relief to the major crises faced by the nation.

* Their agendas are some times driven by hate politics than by the needs of the people, the economy or the general welfare.

* Example: In the early nineties a combination of Church, NGOs, media and the opposition parties jointly launched a bitter campaign against the building of Kandalama Hotel, ostensibly on environmental grounds.

But the underlying political objective was to force the then President Ranasinghe Premadasa to back down and thereby weaken his authority.

* After it was built Kandalama Hotel has won international environmental awards annually and all those who opposed it are now seen dining and wining at the Kandalama Hotel without any complaints about environmental pollution or degradation.

NGOs & Media

* Finally, the relationship between the media and the NGOs need to be examined.

* There is a symbiotic relationship between the two where one depends on the other.

* Advocacy NGOs without media have no voice in the national affairs.

Their causes and their profiles are raised essentially by media publicity.

To this end NGOs cultivate selected journalists who are given preferential treatment - e.g. trips abroad and other perks.

NGOs & Media

* Without the oxygen of the media the NGOlogists would be non-entities, mainly because they are not representatives of mass movements built by grassroot activists. * By and large, NGOlogists in Sri Lanka are an elitist, Westernized, English-speaking, Colombo-centred group of activists whose name and fame depend basically on the impression they make through the media.*

NGOs & Media

* Without a people-based constituency to promote, implement or back their political agendas they depend basically on the mileage they derive from the media to project themselves as key players in the national scene. * Their objective is to steer and divert the national agenda in the direction of their preferred political goals.

* They depend primarily on the media to create favourable opinion to achieve this. Making impressive noises in the media is a strategy pursued assiduously to manipulate public opinion. Manipulating public opinion is vital for NGOs to make in-roads into policy-making.

* Their main objective is to play a critical, if not decisive, role in the national agenda, particularly the peace process. Without a ground force of people behind them they rely on the media to give them credibility as peace-makers.

(The third and final part of Mr. Mahindpala's presentation will appear next week.)