Sunday, June 16, 2019

Clash of Governance

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.  
Dr Charitha Herath
As a result the internal dispute between two main power blocks of the country has come into the public eye now. Weekly cabinet meeting scheduled on Tuesday was not held  last week. The back-bench MPs of UNP have started to play the blame-game spreading the idea of ‘impeachment’ kind of response would be needed. The response by the Speaker Karu Jayasooriya on president’s remarks of PSC was also given a high priority in the government backed media networks showing the ‘coming color of the return’ to the president’s position.

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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