inside the glass house

Dried fish out of diplomatic pickle
NEW YORK - A senior Sri Lankan official working for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was once visiting the Bangladeshi capital on an official UN assignment.

While in Dhaka he decided to pay a routine call on the Sri Lankan ambassador who, it later transpired, was a political appointee untutored in the ways of diplomacy. To the surprise of the Sri Lankan official, the empty-headed ambassador admitted he had never heard of FAO.

Nor was he aware that the UN agency founded in 1945 was mandated to help improve agricultural productivity among member states. Worse still, the envoy didn't even know what the acronym FAO stood for. One of the basic rules of diplomacy is that you do your homework before you entertain an official visitor so that you don't look dumb and idiotic in his or her presence - even if you are a congenital idiot.

After the initial small talk, the ambassador discovered that the Sri Lankan official was a UN expert on the fishing industry. At that point, the ambassador's face lit up. But the punch line was yet to come. As the FAO official began to wonder whether he was about to get a request - maybe for more UN assistance for our rural development - the ambassador turned to him and said: "Ah, you are the right man I have been looking for". And then added: "Can you help me to get some dried fish?"

The story was recounted by a third Sri Lankan official based in Dhaka and working for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Since he accompanied the FAO official, he was privy to the conversation."Is this the type of ambassadors we appoint to our overseas missions?", the UNICEF official wondered.

A valid question, no doubt. Still, not all political appointees are duds and not all career diplomats are sharp, intelligent and upto their tasks. In Sri Lankan missions overseas, you obviously get the good, the bad and the ugly.

As Lakshman Kadirgamar returns to the Foreign Ministry which he so meticulously revamped many moons ago, one of his Herculean tasks is to get rid of all the deadwood in overseas missions. And there are loads of them in the far corners of the world.

The new foreign minister's primary job is to undo the irreparable damage done by his predecessor to a service which is at its lowest. We have about 20 ambassadors who are blatant political appointees, along with legions of clerical staff, who have been party loyalists representing not the best interests of the country but the political and personal interests of their masters back home.

All this was done at the expense of Sri Lankan taxpayers. But recalling all these envoys simultaneously would be a heavy economic burden on the government costing hundreds and thousands of rupees.

The costs include first class air tickets to returning envoys and their spouses, economy class tickets for their housemaids, along with expenses incurred on transporting personal effects. The scores of non-diplomatic political appointees, including stenos, clerks and drivers, will also get their marching orders soon because most of them are not qualified to hold their jobs.

A Sri Lankan ambassador, a longtime career diplomat based in Europe, confessed that a clerk who was appointed to his mission didn't know how to type. But he was brave enough to give the clerk an ultimatum: "If you don't learn how to type within a month, I will send you back to Colombo." And it worked.

We have also heard of drivers appointed to overseas missions who couldn't drive - and one of them crashed his vehicle forcing the government to pay compensation. Another Sri Lankan driver in an overseas mission was even unable to read English road signs on streets and highways. The directions were given to him in Sinhala, transliterated from English, word for word.

Since the government was ousted before it ran its full term, most of the envoys and non-diplomatic staff have served less than two years in their political assignments. And at least one envoy who was named ambassador to Indonesia even served less than six months in her posting.

For most envoys and non-diplomatic staff, what all this amounts to is an 18-month overseas vacation paid for with government funds. Since most of these political appointees are on contractual obligations, they are not expected to abandon their posts overnight or send in their resignations.

If they do so, they are not entitled to the free airline tickets and transport costs. And they will also have to forego one month's salary in lieu of one month's notice for terminating their jobs overnight.

But if there is a massive recall, the economic costs would be heavy on the new government. So the bottom line is that our Sri Lankan missions overseas will have to be cleansed of all political appointees - not overnight, but in painful stages.

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