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Sunday Nov 17, 2024
Tuesday, 27 May 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
He was a speaker on the panel for ‘Transparency for Growth and Inclusion’. The underlying theme for the forum was leveraging growth for equitable progress. The meeting explored ‘Achieving Equitable Progress,’ ‘Advancing Models for Sustainable Growth’ and ‘Realising Regional Connectivity’.
Among those who participated there were many world leaders and over 600 leaders from business, government, civil society and academic institutions representing 30 countries.
Abeyagoonasekera said: “Sri Lanka is doing well economically after the end of a three-decade war, we have agencies to fight corruption. Regionally Sri Lanka is at a good position according to the Transparency International Index (CPI), second only to Bhutan in South Asia but the index is still high above 90.”
He further stated: “It’s important to fight corruption in South East Asia, and we should develop a better culture with tools to empower ordinary citizens to fight corruption. Declaring assets of politicians is not enough; you need to analyse the growth of assets of each and every politician from one election to the other.”
"It’s important to fight corruption in South East Asia, and we should develop a better culture with tools to empower ordinary citizens to fight corruption. Declaring assets of politicians is not enough; you need to analyse the growth of assets of each and every politician from one election to the other – Kadirgamar Institute Executive Director Asanga Abeyagoonasekera"
While other panellists said corruption is part of the culture, Abeyagoonasekera said that’s not sufficient and the culture needs to be changed, and you need to have independent agencies with full enforcement powers to fight corruption.
“Placed at the fifth position of the CPI Index in 2013, Singapore is a shining example of fighting corruption. If the institutions have failed then play horizontal. If you can’t handle it by vertical state structures then empower people with tools such as ipaidabribe to report and quantify the amount of corruption in a country. India adopting RTI (Right to Information Act) was a great achievement. This empowers the people to question government officers on the allocated budgets for their villages or states. People have the right to know about political financing. Being very wealthy shouldn’t be the criteria to get elected to parliament. We need politicians who will to fight corruption that’s most important since all other sub pillars lie on this. Additionally countries should have regional frameworks to fight corruption not confine to their own boundaries”.
Abeyagoonasekera was the only Sri Lankan panellist who spoke at this forum.
