{"id":107229,"date":"2020-10-02T22:03:29","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T04:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107229"},"modified":"2020-10-02T14:56:32","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T21:56:32","slug":"20th-amendment-is-it-a-storm-in-a-tea-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/02\/20th-amendment-is-it-a-storm-in-a-tea-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"20th AMENDMENT \u2013 IS IT A STORM IN A TEA CUP?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janaki Chandraratna <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

I like to thank Mr. C. A. Chandraperuma for\nhis article \u2018Closure Scrutiny of\nCriticisms Against 20A<\/em>\u2019, Sunday Island, 20th<\/sup> Sept. 2020, for\nclarifying some of the controversies relating to 20th<\/sup> Amendment. In\nfact much of the unwanted speculation and criticisms could have been avoided if\nthe Govt., had informed at least the Cabinet, let alone the constituents, the\nreasons underpinning 20th<\/sup> Amendment at a much earlier date, as the\nright to information and sovereignty of the people are fundamental to any\ndemocracy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Governments are generally formed and\nun-formed at the will of the people and the will of the people is largely dependent\non the information at their disposal. Misinformation and non-information can\nruin the fortunes of many a government. The Govt. needs to respect the clich\u00e9\nthat \u2018Information is Power\u2019 and take necessary steps to provide relevant information\nto the public in a timely manner except for national security reasons. Needless\nto say that Sri Lankans have vivid memories of 2015 experience where the govt.\nin power was defeated, in part, due to the slow reaction to possible alleged\nmisinformation pertaining to fraud and corruption against the previous govt.\nranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently the govt. is fortunate to have a\nnear 2\/3 majority in parliament, after an extraordinary campaign by patriots\nincluding religious leaders, who believed in the security and sovereignty of\nthe country. It is important that the Govt. retains this confidence and not\nlull into a false sense of security and allow conjecture and speculation rule\nthe day, as it had done in the last few weeks for not responding to the criticisms\non 20th<\/sup> Amendment. I hope the fears of the public would be allayed\nduring the respective parliamentary debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of the opinions expressed by Mr.\nChandraperuma, in the said article, I wish to differ on the questions of\nappointment of auditors to govt. owned companies by the Minister and the\nprovision of dual citizens to contest parliamentary elections for the following\nreasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial or management auditing of a govt.\ndepartment or a govt. enterprise needs to be an independent function without\nany intervention by management. The appointment of Audit firms and Auditors\nneed to be under the control of the Auditor General. As a Manager of a State\npublic enterprise in Australia, I am fully aware of the widespread ligation and\nclass actions against private sector audit firms, including the Big 4 firms\nwith regard to private sector enterprises and corporations. The appointment of\nindependent Audit service within the govt. sector is mainly to avoid the\npotential for conflicts of interest and lack of independence needed for the\nfunction. For example, Mr. Chandraperuma writes, Both before and after the 19th Amendment, the Minister in charge of the\nsubject may appoint an audit firm to audit the accounts of a government owned\ncompany. In doing so, s\/he is required to obtain the concurrence of the\nMinister of finance, and to consult the Auditor General. After an audit company\nhas been appointed to audit the accounts of a mostly government owned company,\nthe Auditor General can write to that audit company and make them perform their\nduties under the direction of the Auditor General. Nothing has changed in this\nregard before and after the 19th Amendment\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that there is management\nintervention in the appointment of Auditors compromises the authority of the\nAuditor General, to have an independent control over the audit function, even-though\nthe audit has to be conducted under his direction. The audit sample testing\nundertaken and the conclusions drawn can be biased in favour of the enterprise at\nleast to retain future contracts, even if there were no fraudulent intentions. The\nfact that this provision is in the 19th<\/sup> amendment does not\nrecompense for the independence of the audit function. The audit function\nshould therefore needs be under the control of the Auditor General.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument as of dual citizens is equally compelling as\ncitizenship in an adopted country is generally conditional on an allegiance to\nthat country. Many countries like Australia have banned dual citizens entering\ntheir respective parliaments as well as the public service. The provision for\ndual citizens to be elected as parliamentarians has the potential risk for conflicts\nof interest as interested parties in adopted countries can influence them to be\nsupportive of their respective agendas in times of need. This indeed is a risk\nthat needs to be avoided, when taking into consideration the extent of foreign interference\nSri Lanka has had in its internal politics during the yahapalana regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janaki Chandraratna <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janaki Chandraratna I like to thank Mr. C. A. Chandraperuma for his article \u2018Closure Scrutiny of Criticisms Against 20A\u2019, Sunday Island, 20th Sept. 2020, for clarifying some of the controversies relating to 20th Amendment. In fact much of the unwanted speculation and criticisms could have been avoided if the Govt., had informed at least the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}