By Harsha Gunasena –

For some time, the senior members of the government are talking about the state power. What they say is that they did not get the state power although they got the governing power. Going deep,  we realize  their claim is that  they do not have the power to operate the governing apparatus effectively. In order to get this control on one hand they try to put their confidantes in the key positions and on the other hand they try to spread the idea that they did not get the state power. The intention of this article is to examine this phenomenon.

Bureaucracy in Sri Lanka or in any other country is powerful. There are positive as well as negative sides of that. The main positive side is that it provides the continuity of the mechanism  of the government and the main negative side is that the slowness of the implementation of the government decisions.

Sri Lankan governments over the years faced this situation of slow implementation of their decisions and certain remedial actions were taken by some of the governments. The first example I can recall was that the situation faced by the United Front government in 1970. They wanted to accelerate the so called march towards socialism and identified several hinderances. In the first place they abolished the Senate and then established political authorities in all the districts assigning the decision making powers of the government apparatus to the political leadership. This was above the Government Agent. Later under the UNP government this system evolved to District Minister system. This system was later replaced by the Provincial Councils. Powers of the Public Service Commission were assigned to the Cabinet of Ministers as well. The UNP government which came into power in 1977 introduced Exporters Forum spearheaded by Lalith Athulathmudali, to find out solutions for the exporters faced, summoning representatives of all the relevant government departments and entities. R Premadasa has taken the presidential secretariat along with all the ministries to the remote places to  give quick service to the public. He used to wake up government officers early in the morning to get the things done.

Recently Gotabaya Rajapaksa out of frustration said that whatever he said were circulars of which the government officers were dependent on.

Therefore the problem was there for a long time. In order to have quick solutions the present government started appointing their confidents  to the critical points. Previous governments also did similar things. J R Jayewardene in 1965 appointed Anandatissa De Alwis who was not a member of the civil service as his permanent secretary in the Ministry of State. He as the President appointed Neville Samarakoon from the unofficial bar as the Chief Justice using his constitutional discretion. Mahinda Rajapaksa and his government removed Shirani Bandaranayake from the post of Chief Justice. Maithripala Sirisena said in public that Mohan Peiris the successor of Bandaranayake requested Sirisena to continue with his services and assured that he will fulfill the requirements of Sirisena.

The present government appointed Ranga Dissanayake as the Director General of the Bribery Commission and the late Nandana Gunathilake claimed that Dissanayake was a member of the JVP law committee some time back. Although this allegation was denied by Dissanayake, he has not taken appropriate legal action against Gunathilake. This allegation was very serious considering the level of independency of the Commission. IMF pushed the introduction of the new Anti Corruption Act and at a meeting with the civil society members where I was present IMF representatives inquired from us whether the  newly appointed commissioners were independent. Therefore it is not correct to keep this area in gray.

Appointment of Shani Abesekara and Ravi Seneviratne to their present critical posts was a serious violation of the required independency of the officers  since they were the members of the NPP and addressed the election rallies.

The move of the government to extend the retirement age of the sitting Supreme Court and Appeal court judges against the wishes of the many also would lead to a similar situation.

The approach of the government to capture the “state power” is dangerous.

The problem, i.e. the inaction of the bureaucracy may have aggravated due to the actions of the government. Under the drive of “catching thieves”  many government offices were questioned by the CID and some were remanded over trivial issues. One example was Priyantha Mayadunne, former Secretory to the Ministry of Public Administration. No one can blame the government over taking actions against errant politicians or officials. The government should go ahead with that but they have to ensure in the process that innocent public servants should not be harassed. The signal which goes to the public service is that one has to be extremely careful when taking decisions.

In the private sector the managers are allowed to  take decisions. They are not micro managed and not penalized for wrong decisions taken in good faith with due care. If an entity behaves otherwise they cannot expect any growth.

Some of the government officers are utterly inactive and always in the defensive mode. With the present prosecution mode of the government more officers will fall into this category.

In this light only the deputy transport minister Prasanna Gunasena said that they want to capture the state power. He said in 1971 and in 1988 if the JVP won the respective rebellions they would have captured the state power as well and not only the power of the government.  He has forgotten one point. In 2022  a JVP led  mob tried to attack the Parliament. Senior JVP leaders were there. If they were able to capture the Parliament at the time of Presidential Secretariat, Official residence of the President and Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation were under the control of rebels, they could have captured the state. After a revolution or rebellion, if the state is captured, that will be the end of democracy.

In the article 3 of our constitution it was stated that in the republic of Sri Lanka sovereignty is in the people and  is inalienable. So people cannot give it to any one .

The government says that they want state power. On one hand they have neither passed considerable number of policies nor taken any key executive decisions. They have a president and a two third majority in the Parliament. Major inaction is on their part and not on the bureaucracy. They may have experienced a resistance in getting things done and they have entirely forgotten the experience of the people who are the ultimate victims due to the inaction of the bureaucracy. Therefore solutions should have been proposed from the angle of the people who have inalienable sovereignty. If the problem is seen from the point of view of the JVP they need state power but if the problem is seen in the view of the people what would be the solution?

Government service should be restructured. Excessive people should be terminated. Salaries of the rest should be increased. Key performance indicators should be introduced. Promotions should be given on merit and not on seniority. Ownership of the state owned entities should be privatized or those should be joint ventures between government and the private sector. In the 1960s government servants signed the letters to the public saying “your obedient servant”. It should be reintroduced since every time they sign a letter it reminds them that they are  servants of the public. That part is not necessary when they write letters to the politicians, their bosses.

Therefore rather than capturing the state power JVP can do a lot of things. In reality the country faces the problem of the inaction of those who govern with presidency and two third parliamentary power.