Preventing Crooks From Entering The Parliament

By Sunil J. Wimalawansa –JUNE 25, 2022

Prof Sunil J. Wimalawansa

Part 20: Sri Lanka—Changing Pillows to Cure Headaches: Preventing Crooks from Entering the Parliament

Sri Lanka is a rich country; only most of the economically “people” are poor. The current system prevents the middle-class and the underprivileged from escaping the poverty trap. Politicians have no incentives to break this vicious cycle. They are happy when people struggle to live and remain poor, partly because it is easier to fool them all the time to get votes: how they behave in the parliament is a vivid example of their priorities.

The dependency on unnecessary loans and the resultant failure to pay back, causing dollar shortage—fuel, gas, food, medicine, crisis, and maintaining an over-blown and unnecessarily expensive government on printed money is not sustainable. The dependent-mentality of leading politicians to garner commissions from unnecessary projects associated with loans, knowingly pushing the country to bankruptcy, disregarding the consequences to the public is a crime. Their willful negligence prevents the country from escaping poverty and breaking the vicious negative cycle.

Steps should be taken to stop crooks from coming to power

The current Constitution has become worthless, tainted with fatal amendments; it is beyond repair with fiddling. It needs to be replaced by a new Constitution without loopholes to prevent politicians and administrators from pilfering funds and resources. Besides, as described below, there must be set time limits for politicians to serve in a position and stipulate minimum qualifications necessary to contest elections. Some of these are discussed briefly in the following sections.

Mandatory Asset Declaration: The abolition of perks through the new constitution (to implement, starting with an interim constitution) and mandatory declaration of assets at the time of nominations would minimise crooks from entering politics. Including the Parliament, Provincial councils, and Municipalities. Once elected, they should be mandated to an annual declaration of all assets; then, the Inland Revenue Services department should keep a tag on these. This would stop the current trend of corruptive motives that would save the country from further disasters.

Declarations of all assets when submitting nominations for election under the “mandatory” rules must be scrutinised and validated by an independent commission. Those submissions must be considered legally binding. In addition to a stipulated monetary penalty for lying, falsifiers must be penalised by jail sentences. Mandatory declaration of assets will deter politicians from pilfering funds and stealing national assets: as they will be aware that they will get caught and penalised, including jail time.

Criminal records: Besides, the new Constitution must have a section to ban those with criminal records from contesting any election permanently. These measures will automatically prevent crooks and criminals from contesting elections and (weed them off) and becoming elected officials. Once perks and pilferage are removed, crooks will not be incentivised to be in politics.

Legal-binding declaration of assets: All senior government appointments, politicians, administrators, and advisors must declare their assets and income sources for the previous five years and the current upon entering politics and, if elected, annually. An independent counsel must vet these asset declarations to certify that there are no conflicts of interest and that candidates are qualified to perform intended jobs without conflicts and nepotism.

Inland revenue departments must be empowered to collect data based on annual declarations from all elected members AND government servants. The latter should expand to business persons, especially those who manage their business with cash (such as lawyers, doctors, and tuition masters), their families, and entities/companies that do business with the government. This would also make it feasible to assure them to pay their due shares of income taxes.

They must be made accountable for their declared assets and income sources. If undeclared assets found after the initial legal declaration, these assets should be automatically become government properties and impose additional legal penalties. What is mentioned above is the norm in most democratic, industrialised countries—time to introduce this good habit to Sri Lanka via the new Constitution.

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