Freeing public servants

EVEN before a single vote is cast, the tussle over public servants has begun, underscoring even more the deep politicisation of the public service and the absolute powerlessness they face when confronted with swaggering politicians.

The United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA) General Secretary Susil Premajayantha told reporters heads of all public enterprises and institutions would be replaced by the loyalists of their party, if they win the elections next week. He then followed up by insisting his party, which has put former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as their prime ministerial candidate, would follow guidelines set up by the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) to appoint qualified and competent heads to all departments.

This rather contradictory statement perfectly captures the calcified notions of an independent public service held by all top political parties. Successive Governments have worked to undermine and eradicate checks and balances that were in place to keep public employees separate from politicians. The political system over decades has eaten into the public service to the extent that public servants also depend on political patronage to get ahead in their careers resulting in public interest and independence has been left by the wayside.

Since the Rajapaksa regime came into power in 2005, the numbers in public service have more than doubled, reaching 1.3 million as of December 2012. In other words, one in every 15 of the total population is now on the Government payroll. Most of the increases have been reported in security forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Police and Civil Defence), education and health services.

As think tanks have pointed out in successive reports, there are no scientific studies to evaluate the need for and productivity of these public servants. Almost all Sri Lankan governments have tended to be proud to proclaim that they have increased public services and employment therein, despite the fact that this was contributing to a fundamentally-flawed fiscal framework, which is now becoming increasingly unaffordable.

The reports argue that when successive governments were unwilling or unable to introduce economic reforms that would increase private sector job creation, they found the public sector to be a convenient employment creation agency. However, the macroeconomic instability arising from the current fiscal framework calls for a radical rethink of the traditional approach to the Government being the employer of first resort. No program of public service restructuring will be sustainable in this country unless it is supplemented by a package of other reforms that generates rapid expansion of private sector activity.

But reforms of this nature are usually painful and dangerous for a Government since it can be swiftly voted out in the next round of elections. As the public sector became more ungainly it sprouted new departments in a frenzy of ineptitude that is now freezing critical elements of the economy such as investment and exports leaving political parties to mull ways of sidelining them and appointing amalgamated offices to get the work done.

Yet in this case the cure is more expensive and complicated than the disease and every party that comes into power, irrespective of its hue, will continue to subjugate the public service for its own aims. This is also another reason why Sri Lanka cannot maintain national development agendas, continuing to stumble from one term to the next, at war with itself.