Accountability inspired by rule of law: NPP’s path to inclusive growth

RECENT revelations of the many instances of the abuse of power and privilege, the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability of national and political leaders in Sri Lanka range from the trivial to the significant.

- By Ronnie Peiris

From the price of meals in the parliamentary canteen, disbursements from the President’s Fund to ‘select’ parliamentarians and the ease with which they were made to them relative to the hassles which other applicants have to endure, the extravagant compensation paid to parliamentarians whose houses were damaged in arson attacks at time of the ‘Aragalaya’ and unrecovered Samurdhi funds to the significant delays and cost increases of the phase 1 of the Central Expressway, gross negligence and possible fraud in purchase of medicines, irresponsible expenditure on foreign travel by ex-presidents and unconscionable ‘over the top’ perquisites to former presidents, the list is unending. While noting that all of these have been funded by the country’s few taxpayers, it is the background against which these took place which makes them so ‘stomach churning’, distasteful and unacceptable.

As we all know, most of the citizens in Sri Lanka have been struggling to make ends meet in the recent past. In such circumstances, the citizens would rightfully expect their national and political leaders to be more conscious about State borne expenditure. However, as evidenced by the facts, the reality on the ground has been far from our expectations. The facts which have emerged, and are emerging, out of the woodwork confirm that a good number of Sri Lanka’s national leaders and parliamentarians have been aboard a ‘gravy train’ of privileges and have been making merry while the common man and woman were drowning in a sea of strife and pain. Over the last five decades, Sri Lanka has suffered from the unfettered authority of political leaders and from an extraordinary deficit of accountability, transparency, empathy and moral consciousness, a deficit which if unaddressed by the ruling National People’s Power (NPP) Government will drag the country into a deeper quagmire.