Governance, transparency and accountability in public contracts and state dealings have been Sri Lanka's bugbear for many, many years with governments in the past being as guilty as President Mahinda Rajapaksa's current administration. But in recent years this situation has worsened particularly after the Rajapaksa family - the President and his two brothers - Economic Development Minister Basil and powerful Defense Secretary Gotabaya took control of most parts of the economy. The trio is undoubtedly the most powerful group ever in Sri Lanka's post-independence political history. Add to this, the President's politician-son Namal (who is being groomed as a future presidential candidate) and Mahinda's eldest brother, Chamal (Speaker of Parliament), then the circle of power widens. The family's control of power in Sri Lanka and its extent is also illustrated in a recent report by the US State Department on human rights issues. Faulting the government on its human rights record, the report, sections of which were reproduced in local media this week, said: “The government is dominated by President Mahinda Rajapaksa's family with two of the president's brothers holding key executive branch posts as defense secretary and minister of economic development and the other functioning as the speaker of parliament.”? A governance issue that has got a lot of media attention is government land in Colombo being offered for tourism projects to foreign investors, which some sections of the media accuse as being close to “powerful politicians”. No tenders have been floated for these projects and the whole process lacks transparency and accountability governance, journalists said, adding that this is the case in most projects. Another big issue to hit the headlines last week was the government sneaking into parliament a bill to provide pensions to some two million workers in the private sector. Trade unions, workers and chambers of commerce said that the government had assured these groups, during a discussion on Monday, April 4, that the proposed pensions bill would be further discussed before being presented to parliament. Breaking that promise, the government presented the pensions bill in parliament four days later on April 8. The pensions scheme was proposed by President Rajapaksa, as the Minister of Finance, when he presented the national budget for 2011 in November last year. Soon after that the Central Bank Governor Ajit Nivard Cabraal explained to reporters that the rationale of the Employees Pension scheme is that private sector workers – who now contribute to a state-managed provident fund scheme – use up this money quickly (on retirement at 55-60 years of age) and this source of income dries up. Cabraal also clearly said that the scheme is voluntary, i.e., the choice of being a member of the scheme was left to the individual and was not mandatory. Dr Anura Ekanayake, Chairman of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce was quoted in a Sunday newspaper as saying that one of the concerns (of the employers and workers) is that it's unclear as to whether the scheme is voluntary or compulsory. Trade unions, workers and the private sector have in the past dismissed any new pensions scheme, managed by the government, if new contributions have to be made by workers. The current state-controlled Employees Provident Fund (EPF) is made up of an employee contributing eight percent of his monthly wage and his employer contributing 12 percent (which goes into the worker's account). The worker is entitled to withdraw the money at the retirement age of 55 years (in the case of males) and 50 years (in the case of women). The other nagging issue in the new fund is that while it was stated by government officials that the new pensions fund will not entail any new contributions from workers or employers, the bill presented to parliament clearly states that the worker and the employer have to contribute a total of four percent (two percent each) as a new payment. The current size of the EPF which covers more than two million private sector workers in Sri Lanka is 885 billion rupees (nearly US$8 billion) and opposition politicians have accused the government of using these funds for unlimited government spending, etc. The opposition also said earlier that the new pensions scheme is another avenue to raise money for the cash-strapped government to meet its development funding obligations. But political analyst and newspaper columnist Kusal Perera slammed the main opposition United National Party (UNP) and other opposition groups for failing to block the presentation of the bill in parliament on Friday, April 8. “These opposition politicians did nothing because what was being done was unconstitutional,” he told this correspondent. Perera said that under Sri Lanka's Constitution, a bill has to be gazetted seven days before it is presented or it can come to parliament as an urgent bill. The latter process means it has to be reviewed by the Supreme Court before being sent to parliament. Neither of these procedures were followed and the opposition did not object. “The role of the government is to ensure that there is governance and accountability in government. But the opposition is also failing in this role miserably. Forget the government … in Sri Lanka, the people's sovereignty in parliament is not even being exercised by the opposition,” he said, adding “this is what Sri Lankans are up against.” The author is a senior political analyst based in Colombo. __
