{"id":68970,"date":"2017-08-16T17:10:28","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T00:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68970"},"modified":"2017-08-16T17:10:28","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T00:10:28","slug":"corruption-crippling-sri-lankas-coalition-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/16\/corruption-crippling-sri-lankas-coalition-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Corruption crippling Sri Lanka\u2019s coalition government"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0MUNZA MUSHTAQ<\/a>\u00a0Courtesy Asia Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Marred by serious allegations of corruption and mismanagement, Sri Lanka\u2019s much-hyped coalition government appears to have very little to celebrate as it completes two years in power.<\/p>\n

The coalition government under President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to be slowly losing its grip as public confidence dwindles over its\u00a0failure to live up to its pledges of good governance free\u00a0of\u00a0corruption, despite the rhetoric during the run-up to the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n

This month\u00a0alone, members of the public and civil society have taken to the streets in\u00a0separate protest rallies demanding that the government start walking the talk. Both the elderly and youth are also using social media to demand accountability from the coalition, amid signs of instability.<\/p>\n

Serious allegations of corruption, bribery and mismanagement have been leveled against top ministers in the government as well as bureaucrats.<\/p>\n

Plagued\u00a0by allegations of corruption, foreign minister Ravi Karunanayake was forced to resign from his ministerial portfolio early this month. During an inquiry by an independent commission appointed by Sirisena, it came to light that Karunanayake had allowed a person under investigation for irregularities in treasury-bond sales to pay for his luxury penthouse in Colombo.<\/p>\n

While Karunanayake continues to be adamant on\u00a0his innocence, Wickremesinghe termed the resignation of his minister an event that ushered a new political culture into the country.<\/p>\n

But despite the resignation of his colleague, Wickremesinghe\u2019s problems are far from over. The prime minister\u2019s\u00a0very close friend Arjuna Mahendran, who was appointed governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka soon after Sirisena took office in 2015, is also under investigation over the sales\u00a0of treasury bonds. Mahendran\u00a0allegedly gave preferential treatment to a company called Perpetual Treasuries, closely linked to his son-in-law Arjun Aloysius, the same person who had allegedly paid the rent for Karunanayake\u2019s penthouse.<\/p>\n

A parliamentary committee that\u00a0investigated the treasury-bond scam found Mahendran guilty and called for legal action. Because of\u00a0the irregularities, the country reportedly lost 1.6 billion rupees (US$10.4 million) while Perpetual Treasuries posted a 430% increase of in profit during the financial year that ended in March 2016. Subsequently, Mahendran made an undignified exit from his position as governor, and is currently under a separate investigation by an independent commission.<\/p>\n

But Wickremesinghe\u2019s camp is not the only group facing corruption allegations. Sirisena\u2019s close ally Duminda Dissanayake, minister of agriculture and secretary of the president\u2019s Sri Lanka Freedom Party, has also being accused of\u00a0being complicit in corrupt deals.<\/p>\n

In one incident, Dissanayake\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0signed a lease paying 21 million rupees a month for a building for his ministry in Rajagiriya, a suburb just outside\u00a0Colombo. Although it has been more than\u00a0a year since the lease was signed, he and his office are yet to occupy the<\/p>\n

building. The minister has claimed that there was a delay\u201d in calling for tenders to furnish the building complex.<\/p>\n

Analysts are already lamenting that the current administration is no better than the previous government under ex-president Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose government was also accused of corruption, bribery and nepotism as well as human-rights violations.<\/p>\n

Shiral Lakthilaka, a lawyer by profession and a member of the Anti-Corruption Front, terms the present situation pathetic\u201d. He also said it increasingly looked as if politicians no longer bothered about the pledges they made prior to the election, but appeared to be only interested in making quick money in a short span of time. They don\u2019t have a vision, strategy or a roadmap. They are a group of people who are running after a gold rush,\u201d he told Asia Times.<\/p>\n

Upul Jayasuriya, appointed chairman of Sri Lanka\u2019s Board of Investment by Sirisena in 2015, announced his resignation last month, just weeks after reports of corruption against him surfaced, including in the state-run Daily News. The coalition government also suffered a\u00a0 serious embarrassment early this year when both Sirisena and Wickremesinghe laid what they claimed was the foundation stone for a Volkswagen vehicle-assembly plant, only to have\u00a0the German automaker\u00a0issue a rebuttal<\/a>\u00a0denying it had anything\u00a0to do with the\u00a0plant.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the latest development, the chief executive officer\u00a0and managing director of the Information and Communication Technology Agency, Muhunthan Canagey, quit\u00a0this week, claiming that Sirisena had asked him to resign after he\u00a0openly questioned<\/a>\u00a0a deal involving a private television channel in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has also not being doing well in the Corruption Perception Index of\u00a0Transparency International. According to Asoka Obeyesekere, executive director of Transparency International Sri Lanka, the country has not seen any improvements in its\u00a0ratings<\/a>, with the perception of public-sector corruption slightly worsening between 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n

The slight decline in score (37 to 36), which is based on a 24-month data set, illustrates that even when looked at in the best light, the perception of public-sector corruption is stagnant \u2013\u00a0which is very concerning for a government that has a \u2018good governance\u2019 mandate,\u201d Obeyesekere told Asia Times.<\/p>\n

He also expressed concern over the government\u2019s silence on important legislation that\u00a0aims to enhance public access to asset declarations, which the government initially pledged to pass in Parliament by June 30\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n

Since January 2015, one of the foremost national-issues concerns alleged illegal accumulation of wealth by politicians. Sri Lanka is fortunate to have an existing system of asset disclosure, which extensively highlights politicians\u2019 wealth. However, all these documents are guarded behind strict secrecy provisions.<\/p>\n

At the moment there is an amendment bill before cabinet to enhance public access to asset declarations, which the government pledged to pass by 30th June. But the silence on this is alarming,\u201d he said, while highlighting that the legislation would\u00a0significantly empower the public, as information being available in the public domain is a vital driver of accountability.<\/p>\n

Charith Ratnayake, a marketer by profession, expressed his disappointment at how the government has failed to keep its promises.<\/p>\n

We had so much of faith, but even this government is turning out to be like the previous government under Mahinda Rajapaksa,\u201d he said. They keep saying the Rajapaksas stole, and because of that the government is in debt and we are being slapped with various tax increases, and then we see how these ministers who came to power with the promise to rid corruption [are] being corrupt themselves.<\/p>\n

So it is very disappointing. We have been let down even by this government.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

By\u00a0MUNZA MUSHTAQ\u00a0Courtesy Asia Times Marred by serious allegations of corruption and mismanagement, Sri Lanka\u2019s much-hyped coalition government appears to have very little to celebrate as it completes two years in power. The coalition government under President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to be slowly losing its grip as public confidence dwindles over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-106"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68970","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=68970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}