Legality Of The Budget

By Chrishmal Warnasuriya –November 26, 2015

Chrishmal Warnasuriya

Legality Of The Budget: The Citizen’s Power Over the Public Purse 

Given that one-in-every-ten words we hear these days have something to do with “the budget”, I thought of posting a few related thoughts, purely from a politico-legal perspective, for public dialogue and debate; with the primary intention of invoking a thought process in the all powerful Sri Lankan citizenry, who are at least in theory and in Law, supposedly the supreme authority over public expenditure, fiscal policy and management of the State’s resources.

As man’s unlimited wants grew out of proportion with the limited resources available, the same constraints on time spent in governing a country, such as the decision making process of allocating its limited resources to meet these demands also automatically evolved; from “direct- democracy” as practiced in the historical nation-states like Athens or Sparta where the citizens themselves directly participated in decision making to what we have now, which is “representative-democracy”, where we elect a few chaps periodically and pay them a salary (and in my opinion excessive perks) to do this job for us. A primary annual task of these elected representatives is to debate and arrive at the best possible manner of allocating our limited resources to meet our unlimited requirements, by approval or dissent of the Appropriation Bill; in popular parlance referred to simply as “the budget”.

Legal / Constitutional Basis for Public Expenditure

As we know the absolute sovereign of this Republic (at least in theory) is us, the Citizen, in terms of Article 3 of the Constitution; not for instance some king or queen as in a monarchy and therefore any governmental action including public expenditure must be sanctioned by us. So how does this scheme work in terms of the law?

* Expenditure planning by the Executive – by Article 4(b) read with Article 43 we have authorized our representatives holding our Executive Power, the President & Cabinet to analyze our competing interests with the resources available for this year (not how much they get to spend and put up shows for us on TV) and plan out the various allocations to ministries, which is then presented as the Budget through the Finance Minister;

* Debate and approval or disproval by the Legislature – by Article 4(a) we have vested our Legislative Power in a Parliament and the checks & balances work in two principal ways –

•   to debate whether the Budget that has been presented is indeed the right way to manage our monies (not agree simply because they get some gratification thrown their way by the Executive) and if not, to defeat it;
•   Their job doesn’t end there, as once those monies are allocated they are supposed to monitor its actual expenditure via parliamentary oversight committees etc and ensure that our intended purposes have been met

* Judicial Review – By Article 4(c) we have sanctified for our punitive powers in public trust in a system of Courts, Tribunals and a judicial system, which is meant to ensure that those who violate our laws and thereby harm us are dealt with and disciplined

This is how the Sri Lankan Citizen expects to exercise his/her absolute power over public expenditure, which looks very promising indeed in theory; but how is it practiced?Read More