People’s participation in integrity is critical

Deshamanya Bradman Weerakoon was the Chief Guest at the presentation of the National Integrity Awards 2012 organised by Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) at the BMICH yesterday. Under the theme ‘People’s Participation in Integrity,’ he focused on the role of the public officials in Sri Lanka. Following is his address:

Chairman and Directors of TISL, Executive Director, distinguished guests, good afternoon. I consider it a singular honour to be Chief Guest at this year’s National Integrity Awards ceremony. I am aware of the long list of very distinguished women and men who have been accorded this honour in past years and am both pleased and humbled to be in their company.

Deshamanya Bradman Weerakoon delivering his address at the National Integrity Awards 2012 yesterday - Pic by Upul Abayasekara

It is also a great pleasure to be associated with my friend and colleague Arittha Wickremanayake as Guest of Honour at this function. I see in the audience today many of the most fearless and honourable men and women of this country.  You are people of integrity. You have dedicated your lives to making Sri Lanka a nation that upholds integrity.

That objective (TISL’s mission) is in fact what this evening is all about – making Sri Lanka a nation that upholds integrity and as a significant step towards that goal honouring the person who has been chosen as the winner of this year’s National Integrity Award.

There have been many fine thoughts expressed about the concept of integrity this evening, not least by Arittha who has been so intimately concerned with this organisation from its very start. I believe that has given us a very full and good idea of what it is to have a nation of integrity and the challenges involved in getting there.

There has been generally agreement that we have a long way to go and in fact we may even wonder whether we have gone backwards. To be fair perhaps we are now in the familiar syndrome of taking one step forward and two steps back. Certainly there is movement.

Public servants’ participation in integrity

I would like to focus my observations today on an aspect of your overall theme ‘People’s Participation in Integrity’ and to tweak it slightly to deal more with the public servants’ participation in integrity.

I have some reasons for that. I know the word peoples involves more than the public service but since the public service of Sri Lanka comprises more than one million men and women, excluding those in the armed services, and with their families cover three to four million of the 20 million Sri Lankan people, taking that  influential sector within our remit would be excusable.

Moreover, these million public officials, paid by us through our various taxes, have a depth and reach that is very considerable. They can, and should, influence the highest policymakers in our society and touch the lowliest.

Area-wise, they cover the island being important decision and opinion makers in every city, town and village in the north, south, east or west. You find them everywhere; you can’t do without them and you can’t escape them. They are a huge potential resource for good or ill; for acts which exude integrity or acts which are anti-integrity.

I am intimately aware of what they have done, and can do, as I spent over 40 years of my 82 years of life in it – at the Centre and the periphery, and later even had the opportunity of looking at it from outside with a stint in the private sector and with a few international and national NGOs. Indeed, the public service of Sri Lanka is perhaps one of the few things I know something about.

Shining examples

I believe my point in focusing on the public service today is strengthened by two facts. One is that presently, Transparency has an active program of training departmental officials both at the Centre and at local Government level and has achieved worthwhile results. The Department of Immigration and Emigration is one such shining example.

Other important departments are in line, having invited training from Transparency. The other fact is that several of the past National Integrity Award winners have been courageous and forthright public servants and many of the Directors of TISL, including its present distinguished Executive Director, have adorned the public service and been known for their fearless adherence to principle and the ability to resist unwarranted interference in the performance of duty.

Wherever they worked in the public service, the public were well served and assured of a sympathetic hearing, fairness in decision making and elementary justice. They were men and women of integrity.  

Yet, with all these exemplary role models and the training that is going on, the overall image of the public service, when you take some common indicators of integrity are not that satisfactory. The evil of corruption is said to be widespread as numerous surveys show.

A Citizens Feedback Survey of December 2002 tells us that the Police were perceived to be the most corrupt sector followed by health and education. Bribery either in cash or kind has become an accepted lubricant for services which should be normally free and with a smile.

Public servants are paid salaries (tax free) and lucrative perks (such as duty free car permits) for the delivery of these services. Various euphemisms are used to describe these extortions; rent seeking, fees for services, slippage, commissions and so on. But they all mean one thing, bribery and corrupt practice.

What has gone so grievously wrong with our public service as the public now perceive it? The usual public comments are ‘being sent from pillar to post’, ‘come tomorrow’, ‘where is the letter from your MP?’ etc. Has the public service turned into only a Government service?

Influence of powerful interest groups

One of the major factors contributing to corruption in the Citizens Feedback Survey which incidentally covered our neighbouring five South Asian countries is intriguingly referred to as the influence of powerful interest groups.  Obviously the report writer did not want to court trouble and used this euphemistic phrase – powerful interest groups – to hide a naked truth. We all know who the ‘powerful interest group’ is...

It does not require any great detective work to conclude that in Sri Lanka at least the powerful interest group that controls the Police especially, is the local political authority. I have seen it with my own eyes as I worked at the periphery in the early 1970s, on punishment transfer as it was then called.

Police officers of the highest calibre and well trained in investigation were simply not allowed to do their work as they wished. At times, whom to arrest and whom to leave untouched were on the orders of this powerful interest group, alias local political authority. I must say that the ethnic conflict and many years of Emergency rule did contribute to this unwarranted exercise of political muscle.    

Many fine and frustrated Police officers have written and spoken about this profound evil in our midst. DIG Tassie Seneviratne has done so eloquently and in his usual forthright manner.

Of course the corollary of this subservience to the local politician’s orders is that the Police are then quick to seize the opportunity to bend and break the law and derive personal benefits of their own. Once a big favour is done the political authority is apt to ignore the many small wrongs done by the local Police.

And so it goes on; each stroking the other’s back, with the frustrated Public either cursing and helpless or driven to rough justice in their own crude and unlawful way. We have seen so many such things happen and what I am saying is not new to you at all as I see by the nodding of so many heads.  

Abuse of trust

In addition to corruption in vital departments of Government which are serious integrity defaults, there is the abuse of trust which people repose in public servants at times of crisis in which the highest standards of integrity are absolutely necessary. I refer particularly to – when national elections take place or the country has to face a natural or man-made disaster.

At election time there are time-honoured precise rules and procedures which have to be scrupulously observed. On disasters, on the other hand, each is so different from the other that there are no rules covering all situations and the public servant has to act using his discretion and best personal judgement in the public good. My experience – admittedly of times past – is that the public service left to themselves, acts with admirable impartiality and expedition at both these critical times.

The handling of an election particularly was one I, and many others in our time, looked forward to. To handle the long drawn out and eminently fair process by which the people chose their political leaders for the next five or six year period was to have an almost sacred duty in your hands.

That was periodically my personal moment of truth: could you, entrusted for a brief moment with enormous power be worthy of the sovereign people’s trust? A most critical decision lay solely in one’s own hands – to make or mar. It did not matter who won or lost. What mattered was how you played the game. And in many cases, in the early days, I think the public service fulfilled that trust.

And in the matter of national disasters where there are no rules it is the ethical and moral elements in the public servants make-up which come to the fore. I had this experience in 1983 when you had thousands of terrified people seeking a way out of their pain and suffering on your hands. The present public servants have had the tsunami of December 2004.

The disaster was such that aid in unprecedented magnitude flowed in to the country. I think the public service response was overall magnificent. Most of the aid went to those deserving of it; a considerable part went to persons not quite deserving – perhaps due to the intervention of those powerful interest groups referred to earlier; and some very large gifts, like the millions of euros for a maternity hospital in Galle, if we are to believe media reports, just disappeared off the face of the earth. Integrity was heavily in deficit in this case.

Integrity should prevail 24/7 in our lives

One final point about integrity and I shall stop.

I believe that if we are to have a nation that upholds integrity, our observance of the elements of integrity cannot be limited to only the time we act officially. It would not suffice to be men and women of integrity only in our office or office environment. Integrity should prevail 24/7 in our lives. Only then will the people in the largest sense understand what it means. Only then will our children learn it.

24/7 means all the time – 24 hours of the day, seven days of the week. It’s a neat modern way of putting it. It calls for integrity in our dealings at home – with your spouse and children, with relatives and friends and neighbours, while driving on the road, with your community. In fact, in all the 101 things that make up life.

We have the germ of that in the splendid audience that TISL has brought together today. Our collective goal of a nation that upholds integrity will depend on how fully and effectively each and every one of us upholds integrity. We cannot leave the task only to others and especially only to those who presume to lead us.

Thank you