Put an end to Corruption in Sri Lanka

Sunil Vijayapla Oxley Australia

Mahinda’s highest priority should be the elimination of the Tiger menace in Sri Lanka, and concentrate to eliminate corruption, the cancer of our Sri Lankan society. Although Mahinda has made inroads on many fronts, his commitment to wipe out corruption seems to have a very low priority. Having his own bothers in high positions may be construed as an inclination to nepotism yet he isn’t taking any chances with anyone who is not trustworthy and on that aspect Mahinda could be excused.

Thanks to JR(remembered for all the wrong reasons!) and people like Ronnie, corruption was elevated to a level of acceptance at the ‘official’
plane. Lee Kwan Yew, the strong Singaporean leader (dictator in the Anglo terminology or hawked eyed) banished or expelled his own relatives and friends who were proved to be corrupt and Mahinda must follow a similar tough path to bring to justice even Ministers and his own relatives who are guilty of corrupt practices.

Yours truly had first hand experience of soliciting bribes by officers at the Port and at the Land Registry and yet refrained from handing over bribes, to compensate for minor ‘inconveniences’. In Sri Lanka a Driver’s License can be obtained even without visiting the Vehicle Registration office, through bribing officials. The Port at present is ‘controlled’ by a certain ethnic group, probably backed by UNP thugs and politicians, and these unscrupulous elements play havoc in the process of release of goods, by taking huge bribes from especially companies in the garment industry on a routine basis and from innocent individuals. This involves tough measures or even the intervention of Law enforcement as this practice has gone for far too long.

The Bribery department, with an ant-corruption wing, should be streamlined to take swift and effective action with efficient modern communications and a fleet of vehicles and should come under direct control of Mahinda with a ‘hot line’, to neutralise his own party men in combating this menace. The usual intervention of politicians to free their cronies from police, must end immediately and maximum exposure of these corrupt individuals and politicians in the media would be a move the public will rejoice and appreciate. Most corrupt lawyers appear for corrupt individuals (except in very rare cases where people are framed) and those caught red handed should be punished even without trials with an effective system to expedite court cases or having a separate judicial system to deal with bribery and corruption. Mahinda’s goals and objectives may be truly honourable but implementation without a committed task force will be a challenge and his efforts will be in vain in removing this bane from Sri Lanka.

Amongst very few honest Medical doctors, you find the highly corrupt ones who work in ‘despicable environments’ and at high pace, not conducive to the welfare of the patients they treat, just to make huge sums of money on a single day! In fact Sri Lanka is muddled up to such an extent, it will be Herculean task to reverse the process but the government must some how be committed to this objective of eliminating corruption. Civil Liberties groups and Human Rights do not go together with corruption and those organizations should take responsible positions when dealing with such cases. The above groups, again is the neo-Anglo influence in our society, the ‘fashion, the ‘vogue’, (we expats simply laugh at this as we too went through this while living in Sri Lanka, subordinate and subservient to the 200 years of Anglo crap! of double standards) which blindly absorb everything on the face value. Bribe takers must be severely punished, exposed to the hilt in the media and sentenced to long jail terms or to undergo community work.

Those government officials who are caught red handed by anti-corruption officials, reading journals and bulletins on horse racing etc., and waist valuable work time which should be utilised for the purpose of solving problems of the public, should be sacked, without holding inquiries, as those who get caught escape on ‘technical grounds’, through the present corrupt legal system. Few sackings should be enough to teach the rest, who have accepted this as the norm among public officers. Public is at the mercy of these corrupt individuals and hardly any work is carried out during working hours except showing a hollow, rigid, regimental, ‘power play’
toward the public, with a mentality abhorrent and despicable.

Inefficient, ineffective government officials who procrastinate duties and harass the public must be sacked immediately. Once, during the time Lalith was in office I requested him to remove a PSC officer from his position as he was such a slob and an inefficient bureaucrat. Somehow, the head of the department in the Immigration Dept. was instructed to attend to my problem immediately and the issue was resolved in minutes which took months, up until the intervention of the Minister and with a cordial explanation that PSC appointees cannot be removed from office, on public complaints.

It is a fact that some family members of politicos and especially few officials of the armed forces are ‘thriving’, on the prevailing war, a new breed altogether. A special high level flying squad should be established to counter this threat, and ‘intelligence’ should be dramatically increased to nab people who take commissions from various sources and importing weaponry unsuitable for use.

Massive government projects which come under various ministries, do receive ‘compulsory’ commissions, the notorious Enterprise Corruption (World Bank has some interesting statistics on this subject) from corrupt Foreign organizations and companies, especially English, and this money should be diverted to a special fund for development, to show the transparency of this government, especially when dealing with tenders.

INGOs should be closely monitored as there’s rampant corruption within these organizations, with swindling of money, money which should end up on the welfare of the people. World Vision is one institution which has come under the microscope as Tsunami funds collected from especially Australia have been misused. A wise move is to de-register all INGOs, their bank accounts frozen and requesting them to re-apply for closer screening and scrutiny as their activities which have all the hallmarks of the Christian missionary work. Those with nefarious agendas need be scrapped with whatever repercussions from the World Christian/Catholic Church and from US/UN. Sri Lanka has been a haven for these western exploiters and crooks and they should be told that we have inherited a religion which amply satisfies our goals and we need no pantomime dogmas which worship gods and demigods. The government is not doing enough in this area, and as a norm, Sri Lankans fear westerners and have an unwarranted respect for them,
especially toward the English, excepting a very few nationalists. This
mentality should change radically and should change for the better to bring back our value systems, which should be inculcated in our younger generation.

Finally, we should simply eradicate all references of Britain in Sri Lanka, by renaming references such as Victoria, George etc. to our own, such as Maha Maya and Parakum etc. (as the Indians did with Mumbai and Chenai) to give the final death blow to English speaking Christians/Cathlolics, including few others, who are involved with sinister motives and who, one would think, are equally diabolical as the Tiger menace in Sri Lanka. We should not cave in to evil forces which attempt to Anglicise our country just to pave way for a vulgar culture and an inconsistent language, which has a bit of an economic advantage.