Financing election promises

In the 2024 parliamentary election of UK, the Labour Party promised “a fully costed, fully funded, credible plan to turn the country around”. Conservative Party promised “lower immigration, lower taxes, and protected pensions.” 

The British chose the Labour Party. The British voters may not have read the details in the respective manifestos, but the taglines were clear enough. No tax cuts but fully costed plans v. tax cuts and nationalism.

Compared to their UK counterparts, manifestos of political actors in Sri Lanka leave much to be desired. A clear distinction in policy direction among the front-runners can be seen about the strategy for managing the debt crisis– i.e. Continue with IMF; Continue with some changes; Renegotiate. Other than that, the three front-runners essentially promise the same bland superlatives – prosperous country and beautiful/brilliant/or secure life, to quote from headings in the manifestos. But what about the cost of promises? 

This column is an attempt to scroll through the pages of the manifestos of the three front runners – National People’s Power (or NPP) with 233 pages, independent candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe (or RW) with 62 pages; and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) with 38 pages, to develop some taglines based on how each is planning to finance their promises. 

Perusing the manifestos by the three front runners, I see three approaches to financing election promises. RW’s proposals fall into the category of proposals that do not incur significant costs or proposals that are somewhat costed. SJP, true its past practices, seems to rely on benefactors to fund its smart classrooms and other generous promises, NPP is brazen in its disregard for costs of its proposals. The taglines I have given each may be indicative of my biases, but please bear with me. You can fact check or reinterpret facts I present. It could be a painless way to familiarise yourself with the three manifestos.

Before we delve into the details, a word about these election promises.

Whatever approach, a deliberative process from promise to action is a must

Whoever wins, manifestos should be treated as indicative not definitive documents. In the past we heard some civil society organisations insisting that these manifestos should be made legally binding. Thanks to Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s misadventures with tax cuts and organic agriculture which were stated in black and white in his manifesto, that battle cry is no more. What we need is a new battle cry for white papers on changes in key sectors which will be deliberated by Parliament, the bureaucracy and civil society, no matter what the executive promised in the hustings.

We already have the mechanisms in place. The Treasury published an excellent document titled 2024 Budget – For What for Whom. It presented revenue and expenditure in understandable language and delineated Government expenditure in 12 sectors and their sub sectors. We already have sectoral oversight committees in Parliament that mirror these 12 sectors with some sectors served by two or more committees. Bureaucrats need to stop their yes minister responses to each new regime and support these committees with deeper analysis of proposed initiatives. Civil society too should use these committees and the media to give their input. Executive action must be tempered with deliberations. 

Now, to sift through the promises to understand some basics on how they will be financed.

RW proposals – No-cost or somewhat costed 

As a candidate with inside knowledge of what programs are already funded or in the pipeline, RW is careful to frame most of his promises within those limits. More importantly, as a seasoned legislator, he knows that small changes in policies or structures can go a long way towards saving money or bringing in new money. Unfortunately, his manifesto does not makes these approaches explicit. As the drafters may have surmised, the voting public has no interest in these details. However, our manifestos and our politics can be taken to a different level if somebody started paying some attention to costs. We may not go as far as the Labour Party in UK where they linked each cost item to a revenue stream but let us at least begin the conversation.

Take the case of education. Ranil is a veteran of education policy. As a Minister of Youth from 1978-1980  He was instrumental in redirecting foreign aid to establish flagship training institutes in Katunayake, Moratuwa, Orugodawatte and elsewhere, and also establishing the National Youth Services and its spinoffs. On the legislative front he established the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission (TVEC), a regulatory body for vocational education, coupled with an updated authority for Apprenticeships named NAITA. As the Minister for Education from 1980-1989, he proposed cluster system of schools in 1981 and many other initiatives which were torn apart in street protests. But he went to establish Colleges of Education for teacher training and the National institute of Education and many more. 

While others are catching-up with cluster schools and his other concepts from forty years ago, RW has gone ahead in his manifesto to something called a post-school commission and other new concepts. Post-school? When I first heard the term, I was rather sceptical. But coming to think of it, it could be a game changer. 

We have been forever wringing our hands worrying how we make vocational education attractive for school leavers. This post-school commission idea opens new possibilities. If a post-school commission becomes a reality, its responsibility will be all school leavers, not segments segregated by Z-scores and so on. Post-school education will be offered at different levels: i.e. 1-2-year training programs at NVQ 1-4 levels for quick entry to the labour force, 2-3 year programs at university colleges or institutes for advanced technology and management offering higher national diplomas, associate degrees or NVQ 5-6, and 3+ year degree programs at degree level. Degree programs may need a separate body for their regulation.

With this levels or strata approach, post-school education will be transformed from silos operating in isolation to levels which can be accessed directly or completed one after another. The current set of training centres distributed across districts under several agencies are to be consolidated under a Vocational Skills Sri Lanka authority with branches in each province or district, bringing much savings and better services to skills seekers. This is the kind of a no-cost structural change with deep implications for getting more out of the paltry 14 billion or so spent on vocational education. 

There is also a proposal to make the 1-2-year post-school level attractive with generous allowances for apprenticeships, but financing of the proposal is not explicit. The Government plans to pay Rs. 35,000 payment per trainee, apparently for 50,000 school leavers. This is remarkably close to the renewed thrust in UK and globally to put more money into apprenticeship education (The Post-18 Education and Funding Review, House of Commons, UK, 2022). The disbursement of these generous allowances for apprenticeships will need careful planning, but finally it is heartening to see some attempt to correct for the mismatch in funding for vocational education which caters to 90% of school leavers who don’t benefit from free higher education. I estimate the cost to be Rs: 21 b per year but who is paying?

An indication is given in the section on 100,000 jobs in the RW manifesto. It gives several sources of funding which will be made available as we come out of bankruptcy. For example, “As we are recovering from bankruptcy, we are getting development projects from agencies like ADB again.” With or without support from ADB kind of organisations, short term job-oriented post-school education deserves a lion’s share of any increments to the 2024 allocation for post-school education. 

SJB – Reliance on benefactors?

SJB and NPP proposals are poorer compared to RW’s proposals seemingly due to their lack of access to information on ongoing developments in education or their inattention to structural transformations.

Most of their promises on the teaching and learning process and curricula are already being implemented as part of the cyclical curricular reforms by the National Institute of Education (NIE) carried out with the support of ADB. It is good that leading political parties are also in step with these developments but system changing proposals are lacking in their promises. 

SJB proposes a National Higher Education Commission to bring all higher education providers under one regulatory body. This was indeed proposed by the parliamentary select committee to expand higher education opportunities and should be pursued, but now the thinking has shifted to midlevel qualifications. As the post-18 panel of UK says in their report, in Britain they have showered care for higher education seekers and neglect for others, and it is time correct the imbalance. SJB is weak in its plans for ‘Others’.

As for financing their promises, SJB seem to rely on the support of generous donors for initiatives like smart classrooms and trust funds by community for maintaining school facilities. These certainly can be new measures, but they won’t make a dent in the needs of the school system. Of the 422 billion allocated for school education in 2024, only half would go to provinces which cater to 96% of the schools. Of that portion 95% or more would be spent on salaries. A major redistribution of funding from the centre to the provinces is needed, if schools are to receive facilities they badly need.  Even RW stays shy of specifying the sources of funding for infrastructure improvement he proposes for schools.

NPP – No care for costs 

NPP takes the prize for the most comprehensive wish list with no mention of costs. But the details in their extensive list of promises show their detachment for the reality of education administration.

For example, in early childhood education (ECE) they propose an agency to regulate ECE and an institute to train ECE teachers. But a pragmatic proposals for NIE to absorb all curriculum development and teacher training functions for ECE is widely accepted and there is no need for a new authority. Also, early childhood education is a provincial subject, and more than 75% of pre-schools are owned and operated by small micros enterprises headed by young women. Registration and accreditation of these institutions should be a subject devolved to provinces or preferably to Divisional Secretariat division or local government level with NIE developing the standards. 

NPP presents vocational education in schools as a major initiative in education in their preamble to the manifesto, but the vocational track in school was started by Yahapalana government in 2016 and now has 500+ schools offering the program. But NPPs proposal for introducing national assessment at Grade 9 is interesting in that present national assessment are at Grade 5, 11 and 13. Their proposals for teaching about all religions are already in the curricular reforms that are being piloted in schools by NIE. Sex education is not part of these NIE reforms, and it is heartening to see both SJB and NPP coming together in these progressive changes to the curricula, but why will NPP succeed in implementation where others failed is not clear. 

In 2003, the National Education Commission, in a rare demonstration of being in touch with reality, stated that the three obstacles to reforms in education are – politicisation, silo behaviour of agencies and incompetence and indifference of administrators and demotivation of teachers. RW proposes decentralising administration to overcome these problems. NPP approach seems be to continue central control. How will a centralised system be made efficient and effective? Will there be a political cadre which functions in parallel to the administrative structure as is practiced by the Communist Party in China. We have heard some similar sentiments from JVP counterparts in the NPP. Those are issues for concern. We have had bad experiences with people’s committees from the 1970-1977 period. 

As for funding, it is completely disheartening to see a front running Party like NPP repeating the 6% GDP for education mantra, which is a ridiculous for a country like Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s total revenue in 2024 was 13% of the GDP. Allocating 6% of the GDP for education means spending nearly 50% of the government’s revenue on education! Realising that a 6% GDP benchmark does not apply to developing countries, UNESCO has since modified its recommendation to “allocate at least 4% to 6% of GDP to education, and/or allocate at least 15% to 20% of public expenditure to education”. In 2024, the Government allocated 522 billion for education which amounted to 12% of governments revenue or expenditure. Bringing that up to 15% is a reasonable target for the short term.

Note: This analysis does not consider election fever induced uncosted undocumented promises.