The 100-Day scorecard

Concentrating more on governance:

by Manjula Fernando and P. Krishnaswamy

Courtesy: slgurdian.org

Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan

Principal Researcher at Point Pedro Institute for Development, Dr. Muthukrishna Sarvananthan: In general, the government seem to be on correct track although it has not been able to achieve the promises within the stipulated day for several reasons including the composition of the parliament.

But economically, there has been relief for the people through the Budget such as the increase in Mahapola scholarship, the pay hike for public servants and granting of allowances. There have been economic benefits for the masses, that is quite evident, but the relief such as price reductions cannot last long. In the long run the government cannot afford to sustain them, perhaps these may last till the elections.

As for other sectors, there is concern among the investors on Government policy on local and foreign investment. The government seem to be concentrating more on issues of governance, things such as constitutional changes and right to Information laws.

I don't think economically much has been achieved except that the consumers have benefited due to the reduction in cost of living. The Government cannot take concrete decisions with regard to economic policy, the up coming parliamentary election being one reason.

There are some positive moves towards restoring Sri Lanka's image internationally. The moves to regain the GSP plus garment quotas and lifting the ban on fish exports to the EU are in the right direction.

But still much remain to be done to get them fully restored. Generally the international environment has been favorable to Sri Lanka.

The relations with our trade partners like USA and the EU have improved a lot. I think that has been the biggest success so far.

This helps to boost confidence for individuals and businesses are alike. But some of the changes may take longer to realize.

Amazing amount of corruption complaints

Shan Wijetunga

Senior Manager, Transparency International Sri Lanka, Shan Wijetunga: From a corruption perspective, one of the biggest achievements during the 100-day program is the huge public response to the Government's call to report corruption. We were amazed by the number of complaints.

On April 23, Nishantha Warnasinghe of the Anti-Corruption Front filed 56 cases of mid level corruption with the CIABOC. During the last regime, corruption was rampant from top to bottom.

The government has been able to reactivate and improve work of key anti-corruption agencies of the State, especially the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC).

The CIABOC has received over 1,500 public complaints. So far they have started investigations into more than 40 per cent of those complaints. The setting up of the Financial Crimes Investigation Division to probe into major corruption cases is another achievement.

We would like to salute these agencies for the proactive nature of conducting investigations. We know most of the corruption complaints are not easy to investigate, since the evidence has been buried. These agencies are working round the clock. Before the new President was elected there were, more than 1500 complaints with the CIABOC without any action to investigate. In that sense, we as a leading anti -corruption watch dogs, are satisfied with the 100 days progress with regard to fighting corruption. However, there is much room for improvement.

We believe CIABOC is a fundamental tool to ensure democracy and good governance. The Government has allowed these organizations to function independently. President Maithripala himself said that the commissioners had been given a free hand and he had not made attempts to influence or even talk to them.

This agency was highly politicized during the past regime. Most of the independent commissions were redundant and that was one of our major concerns. When I say there is room for improvement, there needs to be capacity building to give more teeth to the investigating agencies to handle the challenging cases before them effectively. Although there are officers and other facilities, some of the cases before them involve international jurisdiction.

What they are dealing with is overwhelming. We are talking about massive cases of bribery, corruption, theft of public funds and money laundering, of a scale that this country has never seen before.

There is public dissatisfaction over the slow pace these investigations are moving ahead, therefore, capacity building and need to cut short the lengthy processes is a must.

We have done a survey of the first 50 days of the ‘100 day program’ and 62% of the people said they were not satisfied with the progress of the investigations into corruption complaints. There is also a communication gap, the government should have some kind of a mechanism to inform the public of what they are doing at the moment. There seem to be a lacuna in that quarter.

Political set up must under go radical change

Saman Ratnapriya

President, Government Nursing Officers’ Association and Convener, Trade Union Collective for a Just Society, Saman Ratnapriya: We supported the campaign to elect Maithripala Sirisena to the office of the President on Janaury 8, with the common agreement that the political and economic set up of the country, must under go a radical change.

As a trade union we did not engage in party politics. We were independent but the prevailing situation - the absence of good governance, democracy, law and order as well as independence of judiciary and the suppression of the working class - compelled us to join with ‘Elect-Maithri’ campaign to bring about a positive change.

Before joining his campaign, we entered into an agreement with him. It included a six month program of action for the new interim government. Subsequently with the consent of all political parties, the six month program became a 100-day program.

The key components of this 100-day program included amendments to the Presidential system of governance, Amendments to the constitution to revive independent commissions and electoral reforms.

We also asked for relief for the masses and university students, reduction in the of cost of living, pay hike for public and private sector employees and tax reforms. Now that the 100-day program has reached its tail end, we are left with mixed feelings. The public sector pay hike is commendable while the treatment of the private sector is not very pleasing. They are yet to receive the promised Rs. 2,500 salary increase.

It is a major issue since the vast majority of the 6.5 million Private Sector employees supported us in the election. We emphasise that the private sector must get a pay hike with the intervention of Parliament.

Another concern is the delay in fulfilling the pledge to make the manpower workers permanent under the interim Budget. In semi-government sectors such as Telecom, this decision is yet to be implemented. Our position is that this pledge must be fulfilled immediately.

The introduction of the 19th Amendment is a step towards democratizing the country and establishing good governance. Therefore that will remain one of our key demands. We have organized a massive walk with the participation of civil society groups, trade unions and political parties tomorrow to demand that the House pass the 19th Amendment.

Nothing much done for Tamils

Suresh Premachandran

Spokesman, Tamil National Alliance (TNA) and Jaffna District Parliamentarian, Suresh Premachandran: As a whole, the government is trying to bring transparency into affairs of the state and fully democratise all state institutions in the island. The government is also trying to end family rule, nepotism and corruption.

Under its 100-day program, the government has done well in these respects. Under the proposed 19th Amendment to the Constitution, different independent commissions would be established and that again is very much appreciable.

Proposals to introduce the Right to Information Act, is one more important move towards democratisation.

But as far as the Tamils are concerned nothing much has been done. About 67,000 acres of lands are under army occupation in the North and East.

There are about 200,000 displaced Tamils living in welfare centers in India and many places in the country. So these lands under army occupation should be released for the people to resettle. The government promised to release, initially, 1,000 acres in the Valikamam North High Security Zone (HSZ) area in the North and another 1,000 acres in Sampur in the East. While the 1,000 acres in Valikamam North has been released under the 100-Day Program, nothing has been done about releasing the 1,000 acres in the East.

About 80 percent of the lands released in Valikamam North are now barren lands because they have been under the occupation of the army for so long and the people look up to the government for assistance for the reclamation of the lands and their resettlement.

The bottom line is that the Tamils are not happy about the 100-day program.

Significant progress

Dr.Vinya Ariyaratne

General Secretary, Sarvodaya, Dr.Vinya Ariyaratne: My overall impression is that there has been significant progress in terms of establishing good governance in the country. Firstly, the President has himself set the example by conducting the affairs of the Office of the President by cutting down extravagance and thereby saving millions of rupees of public money. The democratic space has definitely widened – all people, the numerically majority Sinhalese as well as the numerically minorities, the Tamils and the Muslims, feeling a sense of security and freedom.

Many vital appointments made to key positions laid the foundation for long term reconciliation. The fear to express themselves in public has disappeared.

Certainly the media freedom has increased with even those opposing President Sirisena appear in both State and private media freely expressing their dissenting views which is unprecedented.

The judiciary certainly seem to be conducting its affairs with much greater independence and much less interference from the Executive. Space for civil society seem to have widened even though the government failed to help sustain momentum created by the ordinary people towards establishing good governance in the country.

Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why certain destructive political forces were able to ridicule the notion of good governance and gain a voice once again.

The initiative taken to introduce new legislations on national drug policy and tobacco advertising would certainly have salutary results in the long run. From a civil society perspective one of the major failures had been the inability of the government to bring the bill to introduce a code of ethics for elected officials/politicians.

Need electoral reforms

Rohana Hettiarachchi

Executive Director, People's Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), Rohana Hettiarachchi: The current PR electoral system has been in existence for 30 years and the need for electoral reform was strongly felt due to many shortcomings in the system, especially the system did not provide the space for adequate representation of the electorates, it leads to in-fighting among candidates of the same party over preferencial votes while the huge amounts spent on campaigning leads to corruption.

There are several proposals that have been formulated by different parties and we are still unaware which one is to be presented to parliament. The committee headed by former Minister Dinesh Gunawardene MP formulated a proposal, the Elections Commissioner himself drafted another one, political parties, including the SLFP and the UNP, prepared their own proposals while academics belonging to some civil society organisations, including Prof. Rohan Samarajeewa and Dr.Sujatha Gamage also formulated proposals.The Cabinet last Thursday approved a proposals but we do not know which one it was. But what is of paramount importance in offering electoral reform is to ensure that all communities including small ethnic groups get fair representation on the basis of their population.

Secondly it should also get the consensus of all active political parties in the country. Thirdly it should be workable without any technical difficulties in the implementing process and also acceptable to the implementing authority viz: the Elections Commissioner. So, if these shortcomings would be addressed under the proposed electoral reform then it should be fine. Wide range of discussions on re-demarcating electoral borders and increasing multi-member constituencies are now being held. The last re-demarcation of electoral borders was done in 1976. 36 seats were allocated to the nine provinces, four each for the nine provinces. 160 seats were allocated to the electoral districts and 29 seats were reserved for the national list.