The real test for good governance

The road to good governance is a long one. This week Parliament tabled the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA), which made for poor reading itself, but also emphasised how urgently State accounting practices need to be upgraded to minimise deeply-embedded corruption. 

The report covers the financial activities of 38 State institutions, including 16 ministries, 18 departments, and four district secretariats during the 10-month period from 8 January to 23 October 2014.

As usual it made for poor reading, mostly because the issues highlighted in the previous report were left unaddressed in this one. The usual round of wastage and mismanagement compounded by poor accounting practices have become the norm and serious discussions to deal with financial loopholes have become customary but remain largely fruitless. Even though millions are mentioned in the report, the public know this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Even stalwart members of the former Government seem to understand that the rot needs to stop soon. COPA Chairman Dr. Sarath Amunugama told Parliament it is imperative to strengthen accounting practices and related resources, especially among the secretaries of the relevant ministries as they currently lack expertise.

Dr. Amunugama also insisted Sri Lanka’s current practice of demanding accounts after responsible parties have already ridden off into the sunset needs to end. He prefers a system where the Auditor General resolves accounting oversights with the relevant public servants before they are submitted to Parliament, thereby reducing the lag of transparency to the people and their representatives.

Though new accounting practices have been proposed by the new Government, locking them down within the next few weeks will be ambitious to say the least leaving the quest for good governance still very much an aspirational one.  

COPA together with the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) were viewed as an attempt at financial accountability and transparency. However, as pointed out by Economist Dr. W.A. Wijewardena, the past experience has been that these mechanisms have not been effective in exercising an effective control over public finances of the country. Parliamentarians vote by political party lines and not on the basis of the conscience-calls they are having. Hence, the citizens are betrayed at that point, he noted in a column.

Though the Ministry of Finance and its Secretary are required to ensure proper accountability, they are handicapped by a lack of capacity, knowledge, bureaucratic inefficiency and the undesirable political overriding of the public service that has prevailed in the country since 1970s.

The Auditor-General does only a financial audit and even then as a post-mortem examination. COPA and COPE are outnumbered by parliamentarians who are reported to have taken a defensive line when irregularities in handling public funds have been pointed out as if they are criticisms levelled against them. With no progress on this front in decades, the public have certainly had enough – but what will the public’s servants do about it?