Dithering over Central Bank and Damned 

over UNHRC 

by Rajan Philips-July 2, 2016, 8:52 pm

More than half the government’s troubles are of its own making. The remaining troubles that are not self-made are the ones that the government is supposed to deal with, directing all its energies to addressing them in some order of priority. Yet, week by week and month by month the government creates new troubles while its involuntary troubles are festering for lack of systematic attention. Two examples, one from each category, are dominating the current news waves and illustrate the government’s self-inflicted and inherited predicaments. The Central Bank governorship is a classic instance of needless prime-ministerial stubbornness and helpless presidential dithering. If it is not for real, it would be a damned good script for a political sitcom. On the other hand, the government is damned for real regardless of what it does in regard to the UNHRC’s stipulation for involving foreign judges in domestic inquiries. For the latter, the government deserves universal sympathy. On the Central Bank, it qualifies for universal scorn.

Technically, the Central Bank is now without a governor. The 18-month tenure of Arjuna Mahendran ran out on June 30, and the two chief executives of the government have not been able to come to an agreement about how to fill the vacancy and what to do with Mahendran. For the record, Mr. Mahendran has been quoted as saying, "I will not seek an extension of my term until COPE clears my name." That is a rather odd, if not presumptuous, statement to make, for it is not up to him to seek an extension but it is the President’s privilege to appoint or not appoint him to a new term. Mr. Mahendran can only accept or decline if the President offers him an extension. By all accounts, the President is not at all prepared to reappoint Mr. Mahendran, and on this he is in total agreement with the chorus of civil society and public interest voices who want Mahendran gone. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, is on another plane and has indicated that "the allegations against Mr. Mahendran should be proven in order to take action against him" and that he "won’t hesitate to take action against Mr. Mahendran if the allegations are proven".

Unfortunately, the PM has got it backwards. Everyone knows the old maxim that justice must not only be done, but also appear to be done. Equally, individuals coveting senior appointments must not only be innocent, but also appear to be innocent. The institution is bigger than the individual. If there were no allegations against Mr. Mahendran, there will not be any objection to his reappointment. The objections now are different from the earlier scurrilous objections of the Joint-Opposition forces based on Mr. Mahendran’s Singapore citizenship. The government’s primary, if not the only, consideration should be whether reappointing him to a full term of six years will help or hurt the institution of the Central Bank. It will not be in the interest of the Central Bank to appointment someone merely because the allegations against him have not been proven. Rather, the Bank will be better served by appointing someone without any allegations whatsoever. There are such people for every top job in Sri Lanka, who are not only technically qualified, but are also scrupulously untainted. And the media carried a short list of half a dozen people, some of them well known for their qualifications, honesty, integrity, and political neutrality, who were being apparently considered by the President for governorship. If appointed, they will positively contribute to the Bank rather than being a permanent source of detraction. Good governance was supposed to put an end to making wrong appointments for the wrong reasons. There should be no exception to this expectation, and the Central Bank should be the last place for making exceptions.

President Sirisena has publicly stated that he would be making a new appointment before June 30, but the deadline has come and gone. Mr. Mahendran’s term has ended. No one has been appointed. And the Bank hopefully is being run by an ad hoc committee of three Deputy Governors. Now it is being suggested that the new appointment of the Governor can only be made by the Minister of Finance, who is now in China. And everything is said to have been put-on hold until the Finance Minister returns from China this weekend. This is pure bunkum. The responsibility for the Central Bank was taken out of the Finance Ministry by gazette notification in non-conformance with the law. The Finance Minister has been sidelined and overlooked in all the major economic decisions of the government, except during his long winded budget speech. Now the party line, or the cabinet line, is that the country must wait for the Minister’s return from China before the Central Bank can have a governor.

If this was the case, why was not the Finance Minister involved in all the publicized consultations regarding the re-appointment of Mr. Mahendran? Why was not a decision made before he left for China, given the June 30 deadline? Do not due process and deadlines matter anymore? Can bids and tenders be received after deadlines through cabinet exceptions? We will not know unless an aggrieved bidder goes to the Supreme Court as in the recent case involving the now tainted tender for the supply of coal to the Norochcholai Power Plant. In the words of the Chief Justice, the tender shenanigans have shocked "the conscience of the Court." Troubles of the government’s own making! And let not cabinet ministers trot out the silly old non-argument that Mr. Mahendran has been cleared by the Supreme Court.

Damned over UNHRC

When it comes to satisfying the UNHRC requirement to involve foreign judges in domestic inquiries into war crimes allegations, the government is between caught between the devil and the deep blue see. The government’s plight is one of being damned if it invites foreign judges and damned if it doesn’t. The southern critics of the government are all waiting for the government to trip and fall between its recent assurances that there will be no foreign judges, and the UNHRC chief’s reminder in Geneva that there must be foreign judges. Per usual, the government has been all over the map on this matter, with different voices saying different things at different times. At least, there appeared to be some unity of purpose at the beginning. Now, observers are looking beyond the appearance of unity to emerging signs of differences at the highest level.

The obvious tug-of-war over the governor of the Central Bank is something the government would rather not have for the sake of its own good and for the good of the country. I cannot think of an instance when a previous government, or cabinet, got so publicly divided over an individual appointment. It shows the banal lows to which our politics has sunk from the lofty heights to which our hopes were raised in January 2015.

More ominously, political staffers in different power silos are playing different games with or without their masters’ approval. One such game that is being much talked about is a seminar on foreign policy organized by presidential staffers that became a platform for badmouthing the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga by a born-again Rajapaksa loyalist. This is hardly the method for preserving unity in the troika, at the top.

On the other side, the TNA is tugging along, hoping all the while that some good will come out of the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government in which it (TNA) has invested all its political eggs. The TNA has come out with a measured statement on the Oral Update by the UNHRC chief in Geneva. It has welcomed the update while avoiding any direct reference to foreign judges. It is not at all funny that the moniker for political intransigence among otherwise well-meaning people should invariably involve ‘f’-words: first Federalism, now Foreign Judges. More to the point, the TNA has focussed on the Office on Missing Persons Bill that has been tabled in parliament. There apparently has been positive collaboration between the government and the TNA in the preparation of this bill, and the TNA’s statement indicates the urgency for passing it into law and implementing it sincerely to bring relief to those who are seeking answers regarding those who went missing during the war.

The government has put quite a few reconciliation irons in the political fire. The constitutional and the investigative initiatives are more problematic than practical initiatives to provide answers about missing persons and to provide relief on the ground to their survivors. For all its good intentions, the government is yet to demonstrate its ability to develop a practical road map, set relief targets, and provide institutional support and mobilize people at all levels to achieve those targets. It is only through such efforts can the government and the TNA put in place the foundation for national reconciliation. Without these efforts and a practical common ground, constitutional assemblies and courts of inquiries will end up becoming platforms for shouting matches, as they did in times past.