Super Jumbo

White Elephant

(November 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) To retain his two thirds majority in the parliament, the President Mahendra Percy Rajapakse has created his biggest ever jumbo ministerial team to run the small island nation of Sri Lanka. Fifty Cabinet ministers and thirty nine junior ministers have been appointed to various portfolios. It is bingo wins for most of them in the bending game of politics in Sri Lanka.


The oversized ministerial team is expected to reach a whopping size of a squad of the President, when more members of the opposition succumb to inducement of ministerial positions in the future.

The Jumbo ministerial team also includes appointment of variety of crude political dancers, singers and actors. The hilarious of all is the appointment of Mervin Silva as the Minister of Public Coordination and Public Affairs. The man who does not know how to behave in public has been appointed to deal with public matters. Sri Lanka has never seen a disgraceful boot licker like him who had been elected with massive vote rigging at the last general election to be appointed as minister. He is a well-known public discredit and has been deliberately appointed to insult the very image of good public conduct.

The appointment of Mervin has created considerable debate and speculations as to why he was promoted in this manner by the President. An unofficial comment of a senior official in the External Affairs Ministry was poignant. He said: ‘The relationship between the President and Mervin goes a long way and it is too intricate and dirty that the President has to embrace him at any cost without fail. There are special deals between the two and sidelining Mervin will lead to dirty linen being washed in the public. The President has no choice but to offer him whatever he asked. The alternative is to bump him off to prevent him from revealing a lot’.

In the ministerial appointments, include persons involved in serious Human Rights violations and war crimes in the country. The jumbo cocktail include Professors, a former shotgun terrorist of the JVP insurrection, former LTTE Colonel accused of committing untold human rights violations, persons connected to Colombo underworld, Kommision Kaaka’s, leader of one of the paramilitary group, compromising and sleeping socialists, bigoted Sinhala extremists etc. etc. Most of them have amazed wealth of disproportionate scale to their level of earnings as ministers when they served in the previous government of the President.

Contrast to the appointment of Mervin Silva, the President has also appointed the controversial Ratnasiri Wickramanayake as Minister for Good Governance. Good governance is an indeterminate term used in development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in order to guarantee the realization of human rights. It is a concept of wider meaning and how far this concept will be implemented by the designated ministry of Good Governance, God only knows. Under good governance practice even the foot licking exercises of Mervin Silva will be considered bad practice.

How can Minister of Good Governance bring about good quality with the Ministers who have so far shown bad habits in their conduct? As part of Good Governance practice, will the minister implement transparency, accountability and fairness in the ministerial dealings?

Ratnasiri Wickramanayake’s duties on the face of it look very daunting. Will he ever take the bold step to really bring about the much needed good governance practices in Sri Lanka? Family rule is part of bad governance. President’s siblings are accused of acting as commission kaakas and also indulging in war crimes. Then the President’s patiya (puppy) son Namal is involved in highhanded behaviour in public. His association with a leading human smuggler in the north and a violent group in the south is giving a bad image of Sri Lanka. How will the Minister with the Good Governance portfolio deal with these core men in the centralised politics of President’s family to bring about the first class governance in the country.

Will the Minister implement public disclosure of profiles of the Ministers and ensure implementing a well written conflict of interest policy for them. Will the Minister disclose the minister’s salaries and the official benefits accorded to them and also their wealth details from inherited to acquired during their term as parliamentarians and ministers for public scrutiny. Will the Good Governance minister name and shame those who had passed the read line and illegally made gains?

Good governance will definitely bring about good democracy in Sri Lanka. Will the minister have powers to implement good governance policies across the board to cover all the departments and also influence to hold fair elections and help uphold the freedom of the media and judiciary?

Will the Good Governance Minister introduce a Race Relations Act and punish those espouse racial hatred and tamper with the interests of minorities?

The judiciary is in a pathetic state at present. Its decisions have come into disrepute. Can the Minister bring about fair appointment process of judges and build trust in the judicial mechanism to deliver fair justice by implementing good governance practices?

Will the minister have powers to override the President? What Sri Lanka has experienced so far is bad governance flowing from the President.

Let us wait and see what the Good Governance Minister will do in the short term and how long this ministry will be tolerated by the system that has its foundation on bad governance.