A glimmer of hope

Monday 16th January, 2023

Last week saw two vital institutions infusing disconsolate Sri Lankans with some hope and optimism. Institutional failure is one dimension of the seemingly intractable crisis the country is beset with as evident from the public backlash against most state organs that politicisation has rendered hollow over the years, and the growing demand for ‘a system change’.

Thursday’s historic Supreme Court (SC) verdict against former President Maithripala Sirisena and four others has made it abundantly clear that politicians, bureaucrats and police personnel cannot avoid accountability; their acts of omission or commission are bound to catch up with them someday.

The Election Commission (EC) has stood up to the government, which is all out to postpone the local government polls on some pretext or another, unable to face them. It is intrepidly exercising the powers the Constitution has vested in it to safeguard the people’s franchise. It deserves praise for courageously surmounting the hurdles the government is slapping in its path, one after the other.

What the judiciary and the EC have done will go a long way towards boosting the morale of the downhearted public and making them stay positive amidst the prevailing national feeling of doom and gloom. One can only hope that there will be a judicial fillip to the EC’s painstaking efforts to enable the people to exercise their right to vote and prevent an erosion of public faith in the electoral process.

Poll postponements invariably have a deleterious effect on democracy, and cause public anger to well up and find expression in political upheavals. If the local government elections had been held early last year, perhaps, the people would have given vent to their pent-up anger, with some restraint, instead of taking to the streets, and an electoral shock would have compelled the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government to make a course correction thereby preventing popular uprisings.

Electoral setbacks have a sobering effect on governments in power and help knock some sense into self-important politicians. If the incumbent regime succeeds in postponing the LG polls by any chance, hell is bound to break loose again, jeopardising the semblance of political stability the country has gained and derailing the fragile economic recovery process. This, we believe, is something every right-thinking citizen needs, like a hole in the head. Hence the pressing need to ensure that the government’s sinister attempt to delay the LG polls will be defeated.

The EC should be commended for having brought a top bureaucrat down a peg or two. Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government, N. Hapuhinne, has apologised to the EC for his abortive bid to override it and prevent the District Secretaries from accepting deposits from those who are desirous of contesting the upcoming local government elections. He has claimed that he only conveyed a Cabinet decision. No public official worth his or her salt will stoop so low as to be party to a political conspiracy to sabotage elections. Hapuhinne should have refused to issue that letter containing an illegal directive. Any person with a nodding acquaintance with the Constitution and the election laws knows that once the EC initiates the process of conducting an election, the Cabinet cannot interfere in its work. It was timely action by the EC that helped frustrate the government’s despicable attempt to delay the LG polls; it wrote to the District Secretaries, immediately after the dispatch of Hapuhinne’s letter, asking them to act as per its instructions. Hapuhinne was compelled to withdraw his letter and wipe the egg off his face.

Many are the state officials who have faced legal action and even languished in the hellholes that are Sri Lanka’s remand prisons for carrying out their political masters’ illegal orders. But in the public service, there seems to be no dearth of stooges who are willing to do politicians’ bidding even at the risk of going to jail. There are quite a few upright state officials around, and it is only natural that they are not in the good books of the ruling politicians who promote the servile bureaucrats and short-change others who refuse to lick their boots.

As for Hapuhinne’s high-handed action, which backfired, a rap on the knuckles will not do. Let the EC be urged to take stern action against him so that the others of his ilk will be deterred from overstepping their limits and meddling with its work. Errant bureaucrats like him should be punished in such a way that the politicians who use them as a cat’s paw to pull political chestnuts out of the fire will squirm in their seats.

There are various professional associations of public officials and they had better take serious note of what Hapuhinne has done and collectively resist undue pressure that politicians bring to bear on them to implement illegal orders.There is a misconception that public officials have to carry out all Cabinet decisions, no questions asked. The Cabinet does not enjoy legal immunity; it has to function within the confines of the law, and the officials who implement its illegal orders do so at their own peril.