Drawing the line

Housing Minister Sajith Premadasa has become the latest example of how difficult it is for Sri Lanka to change its political culture when top ministers of the Government blatantly hire their supporters to public organisations in exchange for votes. 

Highways and Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella was caught making the same blunder in July when he told Parliament that he had given jobs to 45 loyalists who had supported his campaign in Kandy. Both Ministers attempted to explain their actions by insisting it was imperative for their political survival to meet the expectations of their supporters.

However, what both Ministers have apparently forgotten is that at least a percentage of Kandy and Hambantota voters and many hundreds of thousands of others in the rest of the country voted because they wanted a change. They voted for President Sirisena and then later for the United National Party (UNP) because they were fed up with the corruption and cronyism that was pandemic in the previous regime. 

The coalition Government came into power and was formed on the basis of changing this system and infusing good governance into every level of Government. It is true that it is not a significant number of employees that these Ministers are funnelling into the system but it is symbolic of an archaic, politicised and self-serving system that the Government, which Kiriella is a senior member of, came into power promising to change. It also shows that despite all their pledges nothing much has really changed in the way politicians work in Sri Lanka. 

What politicians firmly entrenched in the old order have not yet realised is that this Government is being held to far higher standards than the previous one. Simply offering the staid and threadbare argument that worse oversights were committed by the previous Government does not exonerate the members of the present administration. The excesses of the previous Government were the very reason they were voted out of power.

Adding to an already bloated public sector makes little sense, especially given the deep economic crisis the Government is facing, in part because of massive losses suffered by over-employed major State-owned enterprises and ministries. Successive Governments over decades have chocked State-run organisations with political appointees, often with little or no qualification, just to gain votes. Not only is this against the basic principles of economics, it is also deeply unfair by the many millions of people who genuinely work for their living, rather than depending on political patronage.     

Making a bloated public sector efficient is a cumbersome, time-consuming and ultimately expensive process where good money has to be thrown after bad. If politicians have the willpower, then public sector workers can be made to earn their pay or simply told to go home. 

When public jobs are handed out by politicians in return for votes, the political parties they belong to lose the moral high ground to preach about good governance. As Premadasa, pointed out after his video went viral, Hambantota has a significant unemployment problem. But that has to be handled by the Government by encouraging investment, improving employability, liberalising the economy and having stable policies; all of which are undermined by a large State sector. So politicians need to know where to draw the line before voters do it for them.