Personal political agendas override national policies – Comment
View(s):Three important events this week have struck a chord with key economic policy issues that need to be put right in Sri Lanka.
First it was the President’s speech at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce’s popular economic summit where he enunciated, very correctly, the need for national policy formulation by as many actors as possible in parliament for long term growth and stability. This, in fact, has been a consistent, rallying call by the Business Times over the years.
A development framework based on national policies particularly centered on education, health and social development has been an even more pressing need in the post-war 2009 era when the country was poised for a new development path. National policies, a path followed by many developed nations, override elections and other political changes by not being subject to change whenever a new government or president takes office, or when a new minister is appointed (which has been the case in Sri Lanka).
The second was the call by the Friday Forum, a Colombo-based group of professionals, for the electioneering platform to discuss key economic policy rather than corruption and the connected rhetoric which is important but in reality won’t provide food on the table for Sri Lanka’s semi-urban and rural masses.
The third was a connected economic policy issue but in a slightly, different context: Noted Singapore-based economist Razeen Sally, who has been named but yet to take over as chairman of Colombo’s Institute of Policy Studies, calling former Treasury Secretary P.B. Jayasundera’s policies as stupid and terming them as ‘stupidonomics’.
The former Treasury guru, an accomplished economist from the Central Bank who later – as an economic advisor to the Finance Ministry – helped draft budgets when S. Paskaralingam (current advisor to the Prime Minister) was the all-powerful Treasury Secretary under President Ranasinghe Premadasa -, is anything but stupid (or a stupid policymaker). For want of a name to call Dr. Jayasundera’s style of economic management, a better definition would have been ‘spendonomics’ to reflect the runaway spending that the Rajapaksa administration resorted to and ‘carried out’ faithfully by Dr. Jayasundera.
Whatever faults (and many at that) Dr. Jayasundera has, he was a master at his game; clever, cunning, competent and very, very arrogant but certainly not stupid. He is said to have been shortlisted for a high position at the new Asian infrastructure development bank and at one time had been preparing to take up an IMF job in an East Asian country at the time Chandrika Kumaratunga became President in 1994 – positions not for incompetent persons. There is also a school of thought shared among a few economists that maybe there was a more diplomatic way to challenge the former Treasury secretary’s management.
Despite Dr. Jayasundera being summoned to the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) about six times recently for questioning on financial matters, investigators are yet unable to unravel the mysteries of the cash-flows that took place to fund the extravagance of the authoritarian Rajapaksa regime. This is partly due to the former Secretary’s judicious juggling of the national revenue (transferring funds here and there) making it very complex to understand for non-financial experts, justifying the need for the FCID to secure the help of financial experts (if not already done and similar to the expertise drafted in the two probes on the Central Bank bond issue by a lawyers’ committee and COPE) to ferret out information from ‘difficult customers’ in the likes of the former Secretary.
One method to follow (if not already done in local criminal investigations) is for financial experts to be behind an ‘unseen screen’ (like in the movies) while questioning is underway by police and to prompt the investigator when he is stumped by the responses.
President Sirisena’s message to the country’s elite business community that the government of the day under his leadership would maintain consistency and end the practice of changing policies after each and every election should be sweet music to dedicated policy planners and economists who have just one thing in mind – the future of the nation built on a sound policy framework.
He said all previous governments have changed polices to suit different political agendas which included shifting top officials in state institutions from one place. However on the last point, the President might not find many backers with his choice of Secretary and Finance Secretary falling short of expectations.
The Friday Forum raised many economic issues but its most notable point was that, “while corruption is debated in the election campaigns, addressing corruption has become politicised for narrow interests rather than as an issue of public accountability. In any event, the economic future of the country cannot be reduced to a debate on corruption. In this context, the parliament election campaigns are an opportunity to question the political parties on their social and economic vision for our society”.
Meanwhile in a well-analysed article on this page, a Sri Lankan-born, Australian-based economics professor says that “despite the glowing headline economic numbers, there are clear signs that the growth dynamism of the Sri Lankan economy over the past five years is not sustainable”.
To sum up, the economic debate should not only be within the portals of 5-star hotels targeting the elite business and professional class but also on political platforms and hard facts expressed in simple, man-on-the-streets terminology.
Furthermore the need for national policies overriding political interests as pronounced by President Sirisena and articulated in Business Times editorials over the years is something that political parties should strive to achieve once in power – now that the backing of the country’s topmost leader is assured.