In this September 2002 opinion piece published in Business Today, Victor Ivan examines the systemic cancer of corruption and waste in Sri Lanka, questioning whether politicians or state officials bear more responsibility for the country’s institutional decay. Challenging the popular view that bureaucrats are helpless victims of political pressure, Ivan argues that permanent state officials actually hold greater culpability when they fail to uphold the law and instead collude with temporary politicians for personal gain. He concludes that true reform and the establishment of a strong, independent bureaucracy can only begin when both corrupt officials and politicians are held legally accountable and prosecuted for their actions.
Although the war is the main challenge that Sri Lanka is facing, it is improbable that a successful conclu-sion of the war alone will bring emancipation to the country. Corruption and waste are a cancer that has affected the entire political system. Even that, in itself, is capable of destroying the country. Prabhakaran has waged a war not against a strong and healthy country but a country which was rotting inside. Perhaps the war hastened the destruction of the country. However, we must not forget that the country was rotting inside even without a war.
Waste and corruption are not ills inherent to Sri Lanka only. It is inherent to every country to a greater or lesser degree. However, although there is corruption and waste in other countries, the law operates very strongly against corruption and waste in those countries. Sri Lanka’s misfortune is that, in addition to the prevalence of corruption and waste, there is also the fact that the law does not operate strongly against that cancer. The result is that this cancer develops unhampered.
Perhaps the corruption and waste at state level in Sri Lanka affects more than 50% of the affairs in Sri Lanka. The other feature of that corruption is that the top level politicians and the bureaucrats act in collusion with each other in affairs involving corruption at state level and on a large scale.
The question is whether it is the politician or the state official who should be held more responsible for instances of corruption occuring at state level. The popular view in the country is that the politician should be held more respnsible, and that the bureauxrat is helpless. The bureaucrat must be subservient to the politician for his own survival. However that popular view is erroneous. The bureaucrat should be held more responsible than the politician.
In a democratic political system, a politician is a person who has got an official position after he or she is elected to the legislature. However, his or her survival is temporary. He or she is elected by the people for a limitted period of time only. He or she has to get a mandate from the people to be reappointment is permanent. He or she is not a person elected and appointed to state service. He or she has been recruited to state service as a servant of the state required for the conduct of the state machinery in accordance with the law.
The backbone of any political system is the state officials who are in the administrative service. There can be no doubt that they must cooperative with the politicians elected by the people. However, cooperation should not mean permission for politicians to play havoc with the law. Bureaucrats must not permit politicians to act agaisnt the law. In a situation in which a bureaucrat acts according to the law without permitting a transaction that could cause a great loss to the country, he or she has many options available which he or she can resort to for his or her defence. He or she can go before the courts if necessary. Although that might be a difficult option, a bureaucrat has no right to permit causing a great loss to the country, without adopting such an option. Politicians commit offences unimpeded because bureaucrats fail to take action against such offences. Some of them may perhaps be guided by fear. But many are guided not by fear but by desire for advantages for themselves.
This fundamental flaw can be seen in the holders of many important and powerful posts in the bureaucracy. The holders of these posts act in the way that the politicians want them to act, and not as strict upholders of the letter and the spirit of the law. It is this fact that has become the main factor that contributes to the rot in the country.
This state of affairs can be changed only if several bureaucrats who are ganging up with politicians, and several leading politicians are prosecuted and sent to prison. It is then that law will start functioning against corruption in this country too. It is then that the process of the emergence of a bureaucracy, which is not servile to politicians and which has a backbone, will start.