EDITORIAL

Need For Speed

Given the wafer-thin majority the UNF won for itself in December 2001, few expected the government to last a year, let alone the 20 months it has. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has nevertheless, through a combination of cunning and sheer good luck, fumbled along without any real threat of being flung out into the outer darkness, where there is weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. The relationship between the Prime Minister and the President has been bluff, if not cordial, with Wickremesinghe's legendary tolerance balancing off Kumaratunga's capricious haughtiness.

The idealism of those heady days of December 2001 is now past. Indeed, that idealism was shattered within days of the UNF taking office, by the appointment of twice as many ministers as the government could possibly justify. The imperatives of political necessity, we grant, dictated this because of each coalition partner demanding so many ministries, but it did serve to underline the fact that the UNF administration was to be nobody's Camelot - as has been Sri Lanka's lot to bear since independence, this was to be yet another government manned by thugs, goons and nincompoops.

We at The Sunday Leader tend to be unforgiving when it comes to political excess - realpolitik, the art of political necessity - is not our cup of tea. We believe Sri Lanka deserves to be led by the best, and when we find our leaders wanting, we do not shirk our duty to inform the public. Each Sunday morning, the nation awakes to a new set of scandals, often set out in intricate detail in our pages. One minister after another caught with his hand in the till; ministers' sons battering policemen; ministers stealing almost anything they can lay their hands on; ministers up to all manner of mischief. Each week brings with it a flavour of its own, but the meat is the same: political abuse.

Having browsed our pages over the kiri bath and katta sambal and muttered a dark imprecation or two, Sri Lanka shakes its head at the futility of it all and settles into a sort of postprandial stupor in its favourite armchair. So what to do, aney?

It behoves us then to ask what the expectations are of the Sri Lankan people. What is it that they expect from their political leaders? The major concerns of the electorate, without a doubt, are represented by the three 'P's - peace, prices and employment. While there is much grumbling about the quality of the peace, if peace is to be measured by an absence of war, then indeed we have peace. After a sudden surge in prices earlier this year, thanks to Finance Minister Choksy's steadfast commitment to fiscal discipline and Commerce Minister Ravi Karunanayake's tireless efforts, the prices of essential goods have finally stabilised.

Employment however, remains a major worry. The government is rightly determined to trim the public services to the bone, outsourcing to the private sector as much activity as possible. For a nation accustomed to looking to government for secure, tenure-for-life jobs - indeed, it is from this source that politicians derive most of their patronage - this cutback comes as a major worry. For its part, the government is looking to the private sector to create the jobs, and given the 5-7% economic growth rates forecast for the next few years, jobs will come. But for the moment, the job market is pretty much as depressed as it has been for the past decade. Labour Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe is among the few UNF ministers who appear to be truly committed to his mission. Nevertheless, he does need to work hard to move Sri Lanka into a new employment paradigm.

The Sri Lankan people have grown fat and lazy through over-employment in an inefficient public service. Given the machinery in place to ensure fairplay, it is almost impossible to weed out inefficient or dishonest public servants: even they have a right to employment for life. While this may be all very well for the public service, in whom no one really has much faith, it will not do for the private sector to carry on likewise. However, over the years, successive governments have stooped to score cheap popularity points by pandering to employees at the expense of employers. They have made it almost impossible for an employer to fire an employee for inefficiency or even redundancy. They have kept increasing employee benefits so that no one need really work. They have weighed the employer-employee relationship so much to one side that employers shudder to recruit new blood. This Robin Hood approach to labour relations is all very well except that no better incentive could be found to prevent employers from hiring more employees.

Samarasinghe needs to engage with business and industry to find ways of getting more people into the job market. Indeed, to create a job market - something Sri Lanka genuinely lacks. A job market implies that workers have a market value, that they can be traded to the highest bidder. That is the way the industrialised world works: through employee mobility. Sri Lanka has no such thing: what Sri Lankan employees want first is security and upward mobility comes a poor second. Samarasinghe needs to work to change this, as it will certainly help create several hundred-thousand more jobs. Many employers simply will not hire people because they cannot legally make them redundant when they are no longer necessary. Many companies, as a matter of policy, hire people on 364-day contracts after which they are discontinued regardless of how well they perform, simply because they cannot then "go to L.T."

How can the system be changed without disenfranchising labour? Surely, it is time Sri Lanka looked seriously at a social security insurance option. Even if it does not apply to everyone, it could be a voluntary option, so that employers wishing to engage labour on new terms could do so without the Sword of Damocles hanging over them in the form of the labour tribunals. A scheme whereby employers who wish to engage labour on a 'hire and fire' system have the freedom to contribute (say) 5% of the employee's salary to social security insurance, which would then compensate the employee even if he or she were to be arbitrarily or otherwise dismissed, would result in a surge in new employment. It would also generate employee mobility through employees working to improve their skills so they can move to better jobs elsewhere. This would also lead to a significant boost to industrial investment, and hence even more jobs. At the very minimum, in gross employment terms, it would swell the national labour force by five percent. Coming on to two years in office, it is time the government started thinking of what its legacy is going to be.

The UNF runs the serious danger of leaving office, like the PA, with no record of achievement. UNP governments of the past have been notable for focusing on legacy - Mahaweli, Gam Udawa, garment factories, hydropower schemes, ports (even fisheries harbours), airports, roads, and other infrastructure. Not only has the UNF not achieved anything of note on these lines, there is nothing even in the pipeline. The Prime Minister talks much of the $ 4.5 billion he has secured in foreign aid: heaven knows where it is all going for there is precious little evidence of any development activity. Not a single crane in Colombo's skyline; and he should take the time off next time he is in India to count the cranes hovering over Chennai and Bangalore, the regional capitals immediately to our north.

Two years into the J.R. Jayewardene administration, the concrete was already being poured into Victoria. Almost two years into the Wickremesinghe administration the only evidence of concrete there is, is in the skulls of the cabinet of ministers.

The country is fast losing patience with the UNF, and unless the government starts innovating and showing some progress on the ground, it had better start packing its bags. Above all the other priorities it has is a single need - the need for speed.