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Well
done, Ranil!
Four hundred and fifty billion rupees: that’s a lot of loola by
anyone’s standards. One-tenth, in fact, the wealth of Bill Gates, the
world’s richest man. And it is, by a good margin, way more than Ranil
Wickremesinghe ever hoped for. Wickremesinghe must indeed be a happy
man, for the international community has given him their stamp of
confidence, even if some folks back home might have their moments of
doubt.
Much
of the past year has been spent by Wickremesinghe on securing this
funding. Endless meetings reviewing the progress of each sector;
countless committees striving to move things along. And progress there
has been, though not as much many people hoped for.
For
the space of a few weeks, Chandrika Kumaratunga and the LTTE became
strange bedfellows in their attempts to undo the donor conference, with
the Tigers boycotting and the President refusing even to provide a
message of goodwill. The PA’s own Joseph Goebbels, Dr. Sarath
Amunugama, lost no time in pouring cold water on the government’s
achievement by saying it increased public debt. Well, Dr. Amunugama,
wasn’t that precisely what the PA did, which is why interest rates
were in their twenties for much of 1994-2001 period? What is more,
isn’t it right that the borrowed money went not into development but
into billion rupee luxury vehicle fleets for Kumaratunga and her brats
to ride in? Dear Dr. Amunugama, pray put a sock in it.
The
LTTE’s grand gesture to boycott the conference lost them an unique
opportunity to take centre-stage in the process of their converting from
a terrorist organisation to a political party. They will regret that
childish decision, although there is good enough reason for their pique.
What the Tigers have yet to learn is that posturing and threatening can
get you only so far in the world of politics; parleying can get you
almost anything.
As
for Kumaratunga, her refusal to issue even a statement of support for
the talks won her only scorn, with only the Vice President, World Bank,
Meiko Nishimizu tacitly coming to her aid by refusing to lead the
bank’s delegation to Tokyo and sending Country Director Peter Harold
instead. Nishimizu’s patronising style towards non-Japanese Asians has
been widely commented on within the government, on which her slight has
not been lost. Nishimizu has already attracted adverse comment in Sri
Lanka by insensitively helicoptering about the country on
‘poverty-reduction’ missions, with the bank’s aid to the
poverty-stricken villages she lands in being significantly less than the
cost of the ride. She has also chosen to dabble in local politics,
making it widely known that she is a personal friend and admirer of
Chandrika Kumaratunga.
For
Wickremesinghe the conference was a major triumph also in a personal
sense because he did stake his credibility on it. Notwithstanding that,
the donors did have some words of caution, especially with regard to
keeping the peace process on track. This is now the main challenge the
government faces, given the LTTE’s demand for a hand in the
administration of the north and east.
There
can be no doubt that the UNF government has tested the patience of the
people of the north and east to the extreme. Granted, there are no
bullets in the air: but when you’ve said that, you’ve said
everything. With 800,000 people still displaced a year-and-a-half after
the government took office; almost no development activity having
commenced; and schools, hospitals, roads and places of religious worship
in a dreadful state, the north east has yet to see the economic
dividends of peace.
The
LTTE has watched the government bungling the administration of the north
and east for 18 whole months, with no sense of urgency whatsoever. The
Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugees Ministry, lead by Jayalath
Jayawardena, is in a mess. Not even a cabinet ministry, it does not have
a single executive agency under it and has no mechanism to actually do
anything apart from channel money to GAs, notorious for their
inefficiency. Then there is a non-cabinet Assisting Wanni Rehabilitation
Ministry and a non-cabinet North and West Region Development Ministry,
which are totally separate entities bearing no relation to the
Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Refugees Ministry. Finally, eastern
development is a separate subject under Rauf Hakeem’s Port Development
and Shipping Ministry.
The
sad fact is that there isn’t a single cabinet minister responsible for
the vitally important job of rehabilitation and development in the
north. And even more tragically, the two people appointed by
Wickremesinghe to care for the north and east, Jayalath Jayawardena and
Rauf Hakeem, have been found to be wanting in delivery.
The
Tigers have every right to be annoyed with the government, given the
mess it has made of administering the north and east. Seeing that the
job could hardly have been done any worse, there can be no doubt that
the LTTE can only do it better. Their demand for administrative power is
therefore altogether justified.
One
of the principal arguments for Eelam has been the claim by the Tamils
that they have been victims of Sinhala mal-administration (which is
quite separate from discrimination). Eelamists hold that while the
Sinhalese are quite welcome to bungle their own future through laziness,
corruption and inefficiency, there is no reason they should take the
Tamils down with them. Given that the Tamils are as talented and
hard-working a minority as minorities come, they naturally wish to break
free of these shackles and go their own way. In this sense, the Tamil
insurgency springs from the same sense of frustration with government
incompetence and abuse as the JVP’s southern insurgency.
Wickremesinghe
must come to grips with this fact and put together a clever design for
the rehabilitation and development of the north and east. It is not too
late, riding high on post-Tokyo euphoria, for him to make real and
meaningful changes to the structure of his government. The needs of the
hour are a single focused, cabinet-level ministry for north east
rehabilitation and development, and meaningful engagement with the LTTE
with regard to an interim administration. Hedging on these would be
tantamount to shooting Tokyo — and himself — in the foot.
Wickremesinghe
would also do well to pay heed to the cautions that all the donors have
openly expressed with regard to his government’s capacity to utilise
the aid that has been pledged, and the skepticism with which a
significant fraction of the population have received the aid package. On
the one hand, political dabbling in aid-funded projects, corruption and
the inefficiency of the multifarious committees Wickremesinghe has
established, have served significantly to retard aid utilisation. The
four-month backlog of cabinet tenders sitting with the finance
sub-committee chaired by K. N. Choksy, for one, is a telling example of
inefficiency instigated by the Prime Minister himself. This is one of
the primary impediments facing the aid utilisation process, and many
funding streams have expired even as the committee has endlessly
procrastinated.
At
Tokyo, Wickremesinghe won a morale booster comparable only with that of
J. R. Jayewardene in 1978, which set Sri Lanka on the path to
development. Indeed, the 1978-82 period was the acme of economic growth
in the country. Granted, mistakes were made, but the net result was
unprecedented agricultural growth, half the country’s present-day
electricity supply, a modern port and unprecedented private sector
growth. Speeding up aid utilisation means cutting red tape and
eliminating some of those committees. As a result, mistakes will be
made, but it is better to make mistakes and have some progress rather
than make none and have none.
The
proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we would hate to have to tell
Wickremesinghe a year from now that we were right after all — that his
government was indeed as inefficient, corrupt and incompetent as we said
it was. It is in his power, and his alone, to set things right, and
there is no passing the buck. He needs urgently to establish a north
east interim administration, restructure his ministries and put honest
ministers in charge of key portfolios and, above all, put in place a set
of ministry secretaries who can deliver. A tall order, but that is what
the people of Sri Lanka have mandated him to do. Now, let’s get on
with the job
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