What’s Wrong With The Divineguma Bill?
Dr Laksiri Fernando
It overtly appears innocuous; just to create a Department called DivinegumaDevelopment. But it intends to amalgamate three authorities and not departments. The authorities are Samurdhi, Southern Development and Udarata (up-country) Development. This is not the way the government departments are usually created. For example, in 1955, the Department of Elections was created amalgamating the then existing Department of Parliamentary Elections and the Department of Local Body Elections.
While it is not unusual to create a department or amalgamate departments by an act of Parliament, the Divineguma Bill however can be considered unusual or in fact dubious for several reasons. Earlier, Divineguma was one programme under Samurdhi to uplift one million families. Now it intends to devour the ‘mother,’ in addition to two other ‘sisters,’ Southern and Udarata.
When you go through the names of the existing 81 departments of government, those are generally created for permanent functions of governance (i.e. police, elections, agriculture, commerce etc.) and not for transitory or short-term tasks like Mahavelli, Samurdhi or Divineguma in this instance. One exception already is the odd Department of Commissioner General of Samurdhi! This is in addition to the Samurdhi Authority. Only God knows why we have a Department in Barnes Place in addition to the Authority in Sethsiripaya, Battaramulla. A Department is under the tutelage of a Minister, but the Authorities generally are more independent, flexible and efficient.
More seriously, the Divineguma Bill is absolutely encroaching into the sphere of the Provincial Council functions. This is happening under the initiative of one Rajapaksa (Basil), while another Rajapaksa (Gotabhaya) fervently advocating these days the abolition of the Provincial Council system and the 13thAmendment altogether. It is also another Rajapaksa (Chamal) who as the Speaker launched a recent barrage against the Supreme Court, largely angered by its decision to refer the Bill for the approval of the Provincial Councils. He is the only person among Rajapaksa’s who had some valid points for his advantage. All these strange things are happening when the President Rajapaksa is promising India, the international community and the Tamil people that he is ‘seriously pursuing’ reconciliation and a political solution to the ethnic problem, if not the conflict.
This article argues that both the Divineguma Bill and the so far pursued and intended procedure of its adoption, now partly squashed by the Supreme Court, might spell disaster to many of the democratic norms and development efforts of the government itself.
