Sri Lanka lawmakers fiscally clueless: legal activist
Sept 22, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s parliament lacked a permanent fiscal affairs committee paving the way for “mythical” budgets and lawmakers lacked capacity and research to constructively probe public spending and bodies, a legal activist has said.
Senior lawyer J C Weliamuna said Sri Lanka’s “mythical” budgets which go wide off the mark, are being tolerated due to lack of proper oversight.
Budget Committee
“We don’t have a permanent budget committee in this country,” Weliamuna told the annual sessions of the Sri Lanka Association of Economists.
“That’s a huge mistake. If we have a permanent budget committee, the budgetary projections, which in my view are mythical figures, will never be there because somebody can challenge them.”
In some countries he said parliament and the finance minister cannot table budgets without certification from either the permanent finance committee or from the auditor general.
“They must certify that projections are realistic,” Weliamuna said.
Weliamuna said public governance revolves around institutions and the individuals who run them such as parliament, the executive and the judiciary, all of which have problems.
No Capacity
“None of these institutions have the capacity that is expected of them – of meeting the highest requirements”
“Take, for example, the parliamentary oversight committee, COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises) tasked with dealing with all public corporations.
“They don’t have capacity at all. Who are the people who are assisting them? They don’t have a single researcher – they do not have enough researchers.”
But other countries where parliamentary oversight works effectively have financial allocations to get researchers into parliamentary oversight finance committees.
In the US in particular permanent congressional and senate committees conduct public hearings, consulting professionals and produce reports which are used for policy formulation.
Weliamuna, a lawyer who has fought several public interest cases against corruption in both government and corporate sectors, said the capacity of institutions, the judiciary, and the media were too weak.
“When I look at governance both in the government and corporate sectors, there’s a huge lack of commitment in the leadership for any of those principles that we learn as governance,” he said.
Conflict of interest and practices like insider dealing take place in both public and corporate sectors but are often ignored.
For example, Weliamuna said, a situation where the agriculture minister has control of rice mills could have a huge distorting effect on the economy.
“Take for example, in the public sector, maybe a hypothetical situation, say the minister in charge of agriculture having rice mills,” Weliamuna said.
“Look at the impact. That minister can take decisions affecting the paddy market, the paddy economy of this country and everyone of this country is affected.
“What do we do? Are people raising this issue? Other ministers, corporate sector, the people? If they raise these issues, the next day, a white van might come.”
White Van
Weliamuna’s remark about the ‘white van’ was in reference to the practice of such vehicles, usually without number plates, being used to attack or seize critics of the government.
In some cases, people seized in white vans have later reported to have been arrested by police. In other cases they have simply disappeared.
The practice has resulted in charges of human rights abuses against the authorities, which has rejected the accusations.
Weliamuna’s house was bombed in September 2008.
Weliamuna also blasted the practice by successive governments of stuffing the management of government corporations with unsuccessful politicians, their relations or cronies. Sri Lanka also has a long history of deficit spending by both main parties and the country is not noted for deficit spending, which has resulted in massive inflation, high interest rates, currency depreciation and impoverishment of the country at large.
In 2003, a bizarre development took place in Sri Lanka where the opposition lawmakers accused the ruling administration of not wasting money on state jobs and criticized it for cutting the deficit and trimming the public sector.
In well governed countries, the government is taken to task by the opposition for increasing spending and mis-using tax money for short term gains.
Weliamuna said the media, which is supposed to play a watchdog role, was also too weak and ineffective.
“The media is also under siege,” Weliamuna said, referring to attacks and killings of journalists critical of the government.
“The media has its own problems, it is probably not capable of analysing critical issues, its analytical depth is limited. The quality of the media has also gone down, particularly in covering finance.”