It’s politics, stupid

By Kath Noble

(January 13, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The two main contenders for the presidency blundered into a substantive issue in their campaigns last week, although they were rather more interested in trading smears than explaining what they were going to do about it. Corruption, they seemed to agree, is everywhere.

We didn’t need them to tell us. It’s something most people have seen for themselves.

I don’t mean to imply that this is a particularly corrupt nation. In fact, studies by international agencies tend to find that Sri Lanka is better off than its neighbours, albeit not a lot. Transparency International, which produces the most well known ranking called the Corruption Perception Index, places Sri Lanka at about the midpoint of developing countries.

Nevertheless, it’s a big problem. The World Bank estimates that $1 trillion is lost annually due to corruption. That’s a fair chunk of global income.

Developing countries lose about ten times the amount they receive in aid.

Sri Lankan economists have calculated that the national income would go up by something like two percent if corruption were brought under control. That implies less of an impact than ending the war, which was already said to have cost double the GDP before the Ceasefire Agreement was signed in 2002, but putting a stop to corruption is obviously going to be an important factor in the development of the economy in the years to come.

It would certainly be a populist move. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing other people enrich themselves at your expense.

While the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption has done a lot of useful work in curbing petty incidents, it has proven itself to be completely incapable of tackling anything in the political realm. I’m sure we should be glad that it has caught an office aide at the Magistrate’s Court in Attanagalla accepting Rs. 400 to issue a copy of a case record without the usual delays, as it proudly announces on its website, but it’s going to take a lot of such coups to make up for what politicians get up to.

The rulings on the privatisations of the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and Lanka Marine Services are just two examples. They were exposed by the hard work of a few dedicated people, who found the information they needed to convince the Supreme Court to reverse the deals.

The politicians involved, we should note, escaped without so much as a ticking off. Whether that’s because they were blameless is yet to be established.

It isn’t just a matter of political interference. Investigations by the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption are carried out by police officers. Seeing as the Police generally do a pretty bad job of catching people who murder, ithardly surprising that they have yet to wipe out bribery and corruption. That they are particularly incapable of tackling crimes that involve suspects with political connections is too well known to dwell on here.

The trouble with the debate that Sarath Fonseka and Mahinda Rajapaksa are having on this issue is that it is concerned only with character. It has been brought down to the level where voters are asked to decide which of them they believe is the most honest.

This was consciously started by the UNP and JVP, of course. When considering how to market their common candidate, who needed attributes other than having been part of the team that destroyed the LTTE if he was going to stand against Mahinda Rajapaksa, the obvious route was to use corruption. Sarath Fonseka isn’t one of us bad politicians, they could tell people.

That much is accurate, at least. He demonstrates it every time he opens his mouth, as his foot hurtles in at top speed. Whether this is relevant is another matter.

Mahinda Rajapaksa doesn’t give the impression of being an aboveboard kind of guy. He may well be corrupt, although I would have expected to read more details in the Sunday Leader if he were really milking the State for his own enrichment. However, there is absolutely no doubt that he ignores evidence against people he finds it convenient to have around. He has probably convinced himself that such pragmatism is needed to get things done.

This is how even good politicians think, I suspect.

Then there’s the abuse of public resources at election time. Numerous examples of this now entrenched practice have been clearly documented, including in the current race.

The feeling most of us have that there’s something deeply wrong with the way politics works in Sri Lanka is why the Government went all out last week to demonstrate the corruption of Sarath Fonseka. They were essentially saying he is no better than us bad politicians.

I wouldn’t be surprised. Sarath Fonseka hasn’t exactly demonstrated his moral values in other areas over the years. Why he is thought to be so frightfully concerned about stealing money that belongs to the people when he wasn’t at all bothered by the idea of taking their lives is quite beyond me. Perhaps it’s some kind of uber capitalism.

What’s different about him is that he is only now entering politics. He hasn’t had many opportunities to be corrupt, and there has been no pressure on him to ignore corruption in others. Sarath Fonseka hasn’t had to do deals with anyone. He had a job and he did it efficiently. Directions were set for him and he gave orders accordingly. It wasn’t easy, but there were few of the complications that politicians encounter all the time. He didn’t need to win elections or retain a majority in Parliament, for example. While there was scope for him to influence procurement as he moved up the ranks in the Army, his power has been of an entirely different kind on the whole.

Sarath Fonseka has ambitions, so this innocence can’t last. If he’s elected, he will be immediately thrust into the environment that has made crooks of so many people.

This is an important point, I think. While bad people are attracted to politics in the hope of extracting what they can get for themselves, this is not the general rule. They were often good when they started out, just took a wrong turn along the way.

The UNP and JVP are no better than the UPFA when it comes to this issue, and it is with one or other group that the winner will have to work if he is going to do anything other than redecorate the bedrooms at Temple Trees. Given the enthusiasm politicians in Sri Lanka display for changing parties, we’re probably talking about both.

Character will help, but I doubt it will be sufficient to effect a change in the political culture. Even a person like Mahatma Gandhi would need more than his own good example and strong will to get it done, and we can be quite sure that neither Sarath Fonseka nor Mahinda Rajapaksa is such a figure. A good plan would be a start, and voters should be clear that what has been put forward by the two main contenders for the presidency doesn’t qualify.

Some of the promises that have been made are useful, of course. Abolishing the Press Council Act, passing a Right to Information Law and implementing the Seventeenth Amendment would be at the top of my list, but there would be many other points.

In the end, we have to realise that this approach to the issue can only get us so far. Politicians will simply get in the way.

This means that if people genuinely want to see an end to corruption, they are going to have to do a lot more than put a cross in a box. When it comes to deciding who to support in the presidential election, it would be nice to think that there are other substantive issues to consider too.