Ending corruption and building integrity Sri Lanka style

By Neville de Silva

How easy it is to pay lip service to fighting corruption. How hard it is to convince the public that it is actually being done.
That is a simple truth. Yet making politicians and those who parade before the world as national saviours believe this seems a Himalayan undertaking.

As a starting point they should look at their own handiwork.

The other day somebody handed me a copy of the Daily News, the state-run newspaper whose contribution to the appreciation of the English language is as negligible as its contribution to good journalism.

My attention was drawn not to this lamentable state in a once-respected newspaper but to a crudely designed advertising supplement published in it by Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL), a foreign-funded NGO that monitors corruption in the country and other matters of which it is seems justly proud.

The supplement was to mark “UN International Anti-Corruption Day,” and Transparency International ran the slogan “Building a Nation of Integrity” under its own name.

A laudable task no doubt as my friend who handed me the newspaper pointed out and with whom I naturally agreed given that the country seems to have lost its moral moorings and is drifting rudderless towards a great abyss.

On such an important day as this when those who really care are fighting to eliminate corruption and people elsewhere have sacrificed their lives in the hope of making this possible, one was naturally keen to discover what Transparency International Sri Lanka and others have done to achieve this in our own country.

Wherever else you might find this, you certainly will not discover it here and the reader is left completely in the dark about what has been achieved in the fight against corruption and how much integrity has been built into the nation which, after all, is the proudly acclaimed mandate of this organisation.

Transparency International Sri Lanka either had its tongue in both cheeks or is blind as a bat and transparently so.

Those who live in Sri Lanka or visit it for any length of time know only too well that rather than building a nation – with or without integrity – even what remains of the nation is falling apart and not all of Transparency International’s hollow boasts could put the nation together again.

The supplement contained, among other incidentals, four messages. They were from President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Chairman Bribery Commission Justice Ameer Ismail and Executive Director of Transparency International’s local branch JC Weliamuna. Those who didn’t read them luckily escaped the torture of incontinent loquacity. Those who took the trouble to read them would have immediately seen through this whole charade of fighting corruption and building a nation of integrity. If there is one commodity that is in shorter supply in Sri Lanka than food and medical supplies in Jaffna recently, it surely is integrity.

As long as foreign funds flow into these NGOs they could indulge in costly self advertising and hoodwink the public into believing that multiple efforts have and continuing to be made to cleanse the country of the stench of corruption.

But curiously none of the four persons who have contributed such words of wisdom to mark anti-corruption day has provided a shred of evidence as proof of what they have done to combat this scourge that has rapidly eaten into the very vitals of our society.

One would have expected as political leaders, head of the country’s Bribery Commission and the chief executive of the organisation dedicated to fighting corruption and building integrity, to actually tell the public who they are obviously addressing, what they have individually or together done to defeat corruption.

But they are collectively silent on this important issue. A public suffering under the additional burden of shouldering the weight of corrupt politicians and officials are hardly likely to be convinced by a plethora of platitudes when they can scarcely survive with today’s cost of living as I discovered this month.

If Transparency International wanted to make anti-corruption day a meaningful event it should have shown a long suffering public what has actually been achieved in the way of minimising corruption instead of carrying worthless messages from politicians under whose leadership corruption appears to have grown instead of diminishing.

Instead all one finds are honeyed words and pious platitudes about the dire need to fight corruption because it undermines good governance, democracy, development and the rule of law.

The opening sentence in President Rajapaksa’s message is interesting. “It is unfortunate,” he says, “ that corruption remains at a high level in our country despite action being taken to curb it by relevant law enforcement authorities and several civil society organisations such as TISL.”

It is not only high, as Rajapaksa says, but it is intolerable as it is increasing, to judge by Transparency International’s own findings. TISL says that “Sri Lanka’s rank in the Global Corruption Perception Index has consistently slid indicating the worsened state of corruption in the country.”

In the four years from 2002 to 2006 Sri Lanka’s rank has declined from 52 to 84 in the index.

That four year period is significant because it straddles two administrations – that of Ranil Wickremesinghe and Mahinda Rajapaksa – the two political leaders who have in their messages to the supplement been most vocal in spelling out the dangers of corruption and why one should fight it.

Had our political leaders fought this with decisive action against the corrupt in their own administrations and those around them, the public might have more faith in their genuineness in this regard. Just putting pen to paper in a pro forma exercise of concern is not going to convince the public when all round them they see the kith and kin of politicians, cronies and semi literates who have gained positions of importance in successive administration and presidential secretariats using their power and influence to practice corruption, getting away with such despicable conduct. One has only to spend a few days in Colombo to hear the gory stories of corruption in high places and in government departments and institutions that in the old days one felt were beyond all this.

Stories of corruption in the Customs and the Immigration Department where one could get a passport without all the necessary documents or even with forged ones for Rs.60,000 (that was the figure I heard in London about six months ago. Perhaps it has gone up since with inflation), have existed for years.

But now the Inland Revenue Department has also entered the scene with demands for one million rupees to misplace or bury a file, according to stories circulating in Colombo, the truth of which, of course, I cannot confirm.

It does not matter whether this is true or not. It is the public perception that nothing can be done today without spending hours on end in some government department and going to and fro unless somebody’s palm is oiled with sufficient moola.It is this perception that is dangerous for it gradually destroys any remaining faith in politicians and those around them, leading to distrust in the political system itself.

When leaders such as Ranil Wickremesinghe writes in his message that “good governance, transparency and accountability must be central features in our society,” it is laughable. He might well believe in it. But he did not show it when in power failing to act against those he should have when stories were rife about graft and corruption in political circles.

And when Transparency International Sri Lanka says it is building a nation with integrity it is equally laughable for by its own admission during the last four years of its operations, Sri Lanka has slid further into the morass of corruption.
Not a good record to write home about, is it?