More honesty from Govt. would do country and public a lot of good

If stretching the truth was an Olympic sport, the JVP/NPP would win the gold medal and this is not only because of the likes of Nalin Hewage, a Deputy Minister, who claimed a few days ago that Sri Lanka’s Treasury held only $ 20 million when this Government took power, but many others in Government who deem it fit to mislead the public with false facts.

It is public knowledge that when the NPP took over, the country’s reserves were around $ 6 billion and these numbers are supported by the Central Bank but President Anura Kumara Disanayake himself has been speaking of inheriting an empty Treasury and how a miraculous recovery of the economy is underway under his watch when in fact what he’s rightly done is stick with the IMF program put in place by the previous administration which has helped stabilise the economy to some extent.

Unfortunately the likes of Hewage are representative of a large segment of those in Government who feel it’s their prerogative to spread falsehoods and expect the public to accept what they say.

The reason that the JVP-led NPP won control with a landslide in the last General election is to stop corruption, inefficiency, nepotism, and many other sins of the previous rulers. The public was sick with what was happening in the country and wanted a fresh start of sorts.

The NPP has spent the past six months or so presenting different kinds of ‘lists’ to Parliament to expose the misdeeds and corruption of past rulers. There were the bar licenses issued to those with political links, money given from the President’s Fund to politicians (that is now under CID probe), millions spent on overseas travel by former presidents, etc. It is good to bring such malpractices under the scanner but it seems that only a ‘filtered’ version of such lists are being made public.

Take for example the details disclosed last February by Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya to Parliament on the costs incurred by the State on foreign trips undertaken by several former Presidents, some running into millions of US dollars while the costs borne by President Anura Kumara Disanayake was only Rs. 1.8 million in the past six months. Following this disclosure, an RTI activist sought to dig up more information but in response he was told by Parliament there were no documents in its possession to support the PM’s claims on such expenditure, more so any documents to support the claim the current President managed to travel with several others on two overseas tours at only Rs. 1.8 million.

Similarly last January the Government revealed that the monthly rent of the Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo residence of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa was Rs. 4.6 million. But when an RTI sought the official valuation report from the relevant intuitions, there were no such estimates available.

Now that an election is around the corner, we can expect more of such falsehoods and it’s likely the majority of the voters will buy it also.

The NPP still looks better than those who ran the country in the past with corruption at least seemingly a lot less than before. There is also less intrusion in the life of the public like in the past which people welcome with a sign of relief. The bar has been set so low that mediocrity can reign in Sri Lanka even when fake doctorates, crimes, custodial deaths, ever rising prices, lack of transparency (in awarding contracts/agreements signed with foreign nations), etc. stare in the face of the public.

Stretching the truth is a way of life of politicians and the current set seem to be doing it far better than their predecessors. A Government can live off the sins of the past rulers only for a limited period of time, a year at the most. So for now they can continue to reap the harvests of past mistakes of others but sooner or later a time of reckoning will come and so it’s best that the Government be honest about what they tell the public.