| by N.S.Venkataraman
( April 14, 2013, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) By inducting more ministers , the efficiency of the government would not improve. On the other hand, only its credibility would suffer. Unfortunately, President of Sri Lanka gives an impression that he has not realised this, while expanding the number of ministers in his cabinet to a whopping level of 97. One wonders as to what he hopes to gain by this. Probably he thinks that this would be one way of keeping his supporters in good humour. Can one think that while expanding his cabinet to jumbo size, he has shown no concern for administrative expenses involved in maintaining so many ministers and the likely nepotism that would happen , with “job less ministers”, spending their time in abusing power and authority and thus keeping themselves occupied.
The cabinet of ministers in Sri Lanka is now 67 strong including the President, Prime Minister and senior ministers. Another 28 are deputy ministers and 2 have been named under a new category “project ministers”. This takes the total number of ministers in the 225 members of parliament to 97. President Rajapakse and his think tank should have spent considerable time in inventing new portfolios . For example, now there is a minister for sugar industries though Sri Lanka is hardly a sugar producing nation. Perhaps, President Rajapakse thinks that this minister would discover more areas for sugar cane production in Sri Lanka, which would only embarass the new minister.
Sri Lanka is a small country by size and it is unfair to burden the nation with so many number of ministers. The fact is that even so many secretaries are not required.
One only gets the impression after seeing such big expansion of the cabinet , that President of Sri Lanka should be more concerned about providing quality administration to the country and building infra structure facilities and production centres rather than building his cabinet !
The fact is that in the case of appointing politicians as ministers, no particular qualification is required and anyone who has the capability of upsetting the apple cart has the chance of becoming the minister. Obviously, there are so many persons in Sri Lankan Parliament who are capable of upsetting the apple cart ! It is the indication of weakness of Sri Lankan President that he has to recognise such persons and accommodate them.
If Sri Lankan President were to order a scientific study of the functioning of the Sri Lankan government, he would be advised by the management experts that not more than ten to fifteen cabinet ministers are required. Perhaps, many others could be accommodated as members of various advisory committees to give them a role in governance.
One cannot think that an experienced person like President Rajapakse would not know all this. Obviously, he thinks that expediency is more important than providing quality administration. This is a short sighted approach and would not stand in the long run.
The jumbo cabinet in Sri Lanka is an eye sore on the image of the Sri Lankan government.
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