The tense situation of the country, which
occurred due to the Easter Sunday Terrorist Attack seems to be moving towards
inter-governmental crisis between collation partners of the so called Yahapalana government. The leader of the
government, president Sirisena seems to show that he does not like to work with
the other section (or rather bigger section)
of the government, the UNP and its leader Prime minister
Wickramasinge. The latest incident was
the issue of parliamentary select committee for probing the Easter Sunday
attack. PM led UNP seems to think that the Select Committee would give them a
chance to ‘unveil’ the failures of the security arrangements in the country. As
we all know, it is true that the president has been the minister of defense of
the country from the day that he sworn in as the executive president, and the
police department was also included into the list of the institution under the
ministry of defense from October 2018.
As we all witness, the Easter Sunday
Attack happened when the intelligence details of the country was in compromise
and the intelligence briefs provided by external sources were not taken into
consideration seriously by the security chiefs as well. So the president, in
his usual way, puts the ball to the ‘official’s’ side, claiming that he was not
informed of what so ever of these intelligence briefings. Further, the president
has blamed two of his main officers, then Secretary of Defense (SD) and the
Inspector General of Police (IGP) as the responsible persons who acted in an
‘irresponsible’ manner in their capacity by not taking accepted measures with
regard to the said intelligence briefings. The President has appointed a commission
to look into this failure as well. However, the story presented by the other
side of the government, the UNP, is a rather different one. The PM and the
group behind him want to go through the parliament select committee and get the
‘inside’ truth of the story by the said two officers, who were blamed by the
president as the responsible personal of the failure of security arrangements.
It was the issue that the president openly expressed his displeasure and
demanded that he would not be corporative with the UNP headed cabinet if the
issue would continue in the present manner.
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| Dr Charitha Herath |
In short, what is going on in the center
is that the check-mate situation of the governing process started on January 8th
of 2015. Though it was argued by the so called Colombo civil society that the
‘good governance’ that would be produced by this president and the government will
be SO GOOD and will be based on JUST SOCIETY, it has come to a point where that
production of the government is SO BAD and so UNJUSTIFIABLE governance that
these duo have constructed.
It was well argued by many political
observers in the middle of 2015 presidential election campaign that the ‘mixed
policy driven governments’ would generate a misfortune to the country. The
argument was rejected by the majority of the country by accepting the
‘rhetoric’ of Colombo civil society as the truth and expected the elected
government to deliver a wonderful governing style.
Two things that this government (run by
the leaders of both parties) have clearly delivered were non other than the mega
robberies like in central bank bond scam and arranged violence against
political opponents through different means.
The public service of the country has
been put under suspicion from all the sections and the works culture has been
converted into a position such as ‘leaving aside the file’ policy. So the small
scale work that were supposed to be carried on by miner level officer has not been
delivered unless and until that officer was dead sure that the political
repercussions would not be generated against him. The situation of the sectors
where public-private partnership will be needed have become more pathetic and
unsuccessful.
No new jobs were created other than
just the talks of mega factories such as
Wolkswagen factory in Kuliyapitiya and Tire factory in some other place in the
country. Unless we add the ‘selling prices of state resources’ to outsider,
the foreign direct investments were also
not in the expected level after 2015. The infrastructure facilities, which were
even started during the time of the previous regime, have not been completed.
An interesting example of that nature is the road development of Colombo-Kandy
old road. The development process of that road in the middle of the way and the
road construction was done upto the Yakkala
town when the previous regime was defeated on January 08 of 2015. Wonderful
years of Yahapalana government from 2015 to 2019 shows us that this particular
road construction works is still been processing just finishing couple of
kilometers from the Yakkala township. If the Yahapala government in this nature
would continue, I guess that finishing this road up to Nittambuwa would take
another 35 odd year!
The government of this nature which has
two faces and hybrid activity in all most all the areas, has shown us not only the
failure side of the government leaderships but also disaster driven class of
governance in south Asian region.
Dr Charitha Herath
@charith9
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