Monday, 11 August 2014 00:00
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SRI LANKA’S Parliament is well-known for adding layers of ineffectual bureaucracy while failing to notice the obvious. Just days after a damning report was delivered by the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), a motion was passed in the House to create a new post of ‘Special Prosecutor’ as a measure to minimise the political interferences on Government service.
The new post will have the power to report directly to Parliament on interferences in the public sector, according to reports, but in a country that already has layers of commissions and other bureaucracy that do not function competently, the question naturally arises whether a ‘Special Prosecutor’ will in fact provide anything special.
One layer is the nine-member Public Service Commission (PSC) appointed by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in July. The PSC has the power to formulate rules, regulations and procedures relating to the Public Service. The power sounds impressive, yet during successive decades, the country’s public sector has arguably declined from bad to worse, losing public trust and confidence in the process. So can the rot really be stopped?
Ideally the PSC along with the Bribery and Corruption Commission, COPE and the new prosecutor should promote and maintain the highest levels of integrity, impartiality, accountability and leadership across the State sector. But this is largely undermined by the political nature and political appointments that make up these in the first place. Rising above that has proved challenging for many commissions, including the Bribery and Corruption Commission, that should ideally work hand-in-glove with the PSC. Another excellent example of infectiveness is COPE, which also presents its findings on fraud year after year to Parliament with no results.
Another target should be to improve the capability of the State sector to provide strategic and innovative policy advice, implement the decisions of the Government and meet public expectations. For this, the public service must attract and retain a high calibre professional State sector workforce. Yet, is this the case in Sri Lanka? Surely there are competent individuals, but an image of overall professionalism eludes the public sector as a whole, with corruption, strikes, cronyism, nepotism and short-term policies dominating the sector.
Another challenge for these stakeholders is to ensure that State sector recruitment and selection processes comply with the merit principle and adhere to professional standards. This is imperative to foster a public service culture in which customer service, initiative, individual responsibility and the achievement of results are strongly valued.
Sri Lanka’s overloaded public sector recruits based on politics and prefers seniority to competence. Since elections and the highest of elected officials frequently use the public service for vote gathering purposes, this may prove to be the hardest nut for the new appointee to crack and it will likely not even attempt it.
Build public confidence in the State sector is a task expected of all these intuitions. Supporting the Government in achieving positive budget outcomes through strengthening the capability of the State sector workforce is essential, especially given the state of Sri Lanka’s loss-making State-Owned Enterprises. These losses are estimated by economists to cost 2% of GDP annually and continue to crawl reluctantly towards reform. With such a massive task looming in front of them, it is unlikely that the Special Prosecutor will be anything more than yet another lame duck.
