Defeating all expectations of good governance on which the National Peoples’ Power (NPP) and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) coasted to a stunning electoral victory in 2024, the NPP Government has stubbornly turned a deaf ear to public appeals to speedily appoint the Chair of the Right to Information Commission (RTIC) left vacant since March 4^th 2025 and to fill long pending vacancies in the senior legal staff of the Commission.

These appeals include a recent Open Letter sent to the President and the Constitutional Council by one hundred and seventeen public intellectuals, lawyers, journalists, activists, trade unionists as well as former heads and members of independent constitutional commissions. Observing that the RTI Commission is ‘a critically important independent organ that ensures the government’s accountability to the public’, the President was told that the acid test of a system change in good governance was whether the NPP will support or sabotage the Commission.

The signatories called upon the Constitutional Council, when recommending commissioners to the RTIC as well as the President, when appointing the recommended Commissioner/the Chair, to consider the candidates’ proven track record of ‘commitment to human rights and free speech, as well as their knowledge, experience, and proficiency.’

This appeal follows strongly worded representations made to the Government by the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, the Sri Lanka Press Institute comprising the Editors Guild of Sri Lanka, the Newspaper Publishers Society, the Free Media Movement (FMM) and other media associations  as well as civil society organisations PAFFREL and Transparency International, Sri Lanka on similar lines. The necessity to immediately fill the vacant seat of Chair, RTIC from among the sitting Commissioners was emphasized in common.

However, there has been little movement on this matter by the Government even though, as the Colombo Telegraph learns, a name of a senior Sinhala journalist to fill the 5^th and remaining seat on the RTI Commission has already been forwarded to the President by the Constitutional Council in July. Sri Lanka’s community of RTI activists have referred to this delay as a deliberate sabotage of the RTIC which has been prominently asserting the duty of the Government to release information when requests are filed.

This has been met with resistance from the NPP including the Presidential Secretariat refusing to disclose the names and expenses of officers attached to its media division. The Government has also refused to disclose the recent Memoranda of Understanding between Sri Lanka and India on crucial matters, including defence.

At a recent Cabinet briefing, the Cabinet spokesman was aggressively questioned by journalists as to why the Government is resisting RTI when previous Governments had not done so. An attempt to blame the Constitutional Council for the delay by saying that the Council did not include the NPP’s selected civil society members and that the Council has yet not recommended a name as the 5^th RTI Commissioner backfired when media personnel asked as to why the President was not appointing the Chair from among the existing Commissioners as per the RTI Act.      

This came in the wake of public outrage over an attempt by the Government to appoint a former Secretary to the Media Ministry, Nimal Bopage during the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe coalition Government as Chair of the RTIC despite corruption allegations in a 2018 report by the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) headed by DEW Gunesekera. Reacting to fury by factions of the NPP itself against this move which was leaked, the Government backed off while Bopage whose anti-RTI record was well known at the time, also withdrew his application to the Constitutional Council.  

The Commission comprises five Commissioners, three of which seats have to be filled on nomination with one secured seat for the Bar Association of Sri Lanka who has to nominate an ‘attorney-at-law of eminence’ or a legal academic. The other two seats have to be filled by nominees of media persons and by civil society organisations. It is the sole decision of the President to appoint the Chair, the Constitutional Council plays no role in that respect.

The RTI Act is silent on the manner of filling the remaining two seats of the five member Commission leading to the Constitutional Council calling for applications to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of former RTIC Chair, Supreme Court Justice Upaly Abeyratne on 4^th March 2025. Justice Abeyratne was appointed as Chair by former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in December 2021 notably not on the nomination of any organization at the time.   

Currently, four Commissioners sit on the RTIC, namely recently retired Justice DN Samarakoon as the nominee of the Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI), attorney Kishali Pinto-Jayawardena as the nominee of the Bar Association, attorney Jagath Liyana Arachchi as the nominee of civil society with retired educationist and former member, Public Service Commission, A.M Nahiya.

Queries by Colombo Telegraph from the staff of the Commission as to whether the Commission is ‘functional’ in the absence of a Chair have revealed the fact that the Commission has been operating as normal since March. A staff member who did not wish to be named said that the Commission continues to hear more than thirty appeals for the day on appeal sitting days with decisions being handed down.

Delays have taken place due to obstacles being placed by the Media Ministry to the appointment of legal staff for the Commission which has 1 legal officer and three legal assistants. This has been highly inadequate to deal with regular appeals and inquiries together with appearing for the Commission in the Court of Appeal and the Magistrate’s Court. Only a quarter of the approved staff cadre positions in general are presently filled. Salaries of the staff of the Commission as well as the allowances to the Commissioners are also the lowest among the independent Commissions.

Though the Commission was given ‘independent status’ by RTI Act No 12 of 2016 with the authority to recruit its own staff, the placing of its funding line under the Media Ministry has compromised that position, the Free Media Movement said on Friday (July 25^th) in a media briefing held on the issue. On what basis is the NPP Government continuing to defend its anti-corruption stand while crippling the RTI Commission, it was asked?

The continuing controversy over the NPP Government’s stand on the RTI Commission has come amidst recent reports that the Government is intending to change the composition of the Constitutional Council and the independent commissions by providing for the composition of these bodies to change ‘each time that a Prime Minister changes.’ That has led to public concern in regard to politicization of entities meant to act as curb on the President’s power with tussles between the NPP and the National Police Commission (NPC) also being of public record.

The last time such attempts were evidenced was when former President Mahinda Rajapaksa replaced the Constitutional Council with a ‘Parliamentary Council’ and installed puppet-like commissions. Is the NPP headed this same way, media activists who campaigned for a change of regime in 2024, question?