Financial Profligacy Of An Omnibus Cabinet: Can Sri Lanka Afford This Scandal?

By Ameer Ali –June 9, 2016 

Dr. Ameer Ali

In September last year in a piece I titled “An Omnibus Cabinet & Outvoted Parliamentarians: Can the Economy Afford to Maintain This Colony of Prodigals?” (Colombo Telegraph, September 7, 2015) I posed a question, “Can anyone tell the people the estimated total cost of this colony of artificially elevated political gentry?”. Ten months have passed since then, and the public auditors should have some rough idea to answer my question.

I raise that question once again in the light of the recent request for 1.1 billion rupees (equivalent to roughly US$ 2.5 million) allocation to import 42 “luxury cars” for some ministers and their deputies. While the government policy of economic liberalism is pushing down the throats of ordinary people the so called programs of austerity what moral right have the rulers to indulge in financial extravagance?

Sri Lanka is sinking in national debt and foreign lenders are having a strangle hold in the economy’s assets. Isn’t there a national need to economise expenditure without hurting the ordinary families? With the decline in oil prices and economic downturn in the Arab countries foreign remittances from Sri Lankan expatriates which tranquilised the economic pain of many families is also disappearing fast. It is time the country look for an alternative economic model to make ends meet and protect its independence. The reform should start at the top with the President, the Prime Minister and their coteries of political functionaries.

It is in this context that I also want to raise the issue of the economic viability of decentralised political administration in Sri Lanka. What is the actual cost of maintaining all those provincial councils, their chief ministers and their officialdom? What useful service are these political parvenus performing to deserve their status? The recent incident about the public behaviour of a provincial chief minister has exposed the danger of having too many petty chiefs consuming too much resources and power with too little knowledge about public decorum and behaviour. The periodical elections conducted to choose these chiefs and their lackeys on top of the cost of conducting national elections to the parliament obviously impose unbearable strain on the public purse with incommensurable return.

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