ESSAY

From Good Governance to

Inept Governance
Jayadeva Uyangoda

fter just one and half years in office, the Yahapalana government is in a crisis of sorts. It
is not a crisis about the governments stability.
Actually, the joint opposition led by former
President Mahinda Rajapaksa is in disarray and there is
no immediate threat to the government from within or
outside parliament. The crisis is marked by the increasing
and continuing alienation of the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe
administration from its political support bases. The fact that
the leaders of the government dont seem to care is pushing it
into a crisis of legitimacy as well.
Meanwhile, the bond issue controversy of the Central
Bank emerged as a source of great vulnerability for the
government. It ate into the core of the Yahapalana governments politico-moral claims. It also laid bare deep divisions
that seem to exist between the two main centers of power
within the so-called National Unity government: The Prime
Minister, who represents the parliamentary power centre of
the government, tried to keep the Central Bank Governor for
another term in office on the grounds that no wrong doing
had occurred in the bond issue. In contrast, the President,
the head of the executive centre of power, wanted Arjuna
Mahendran out.
At one level, the simmering crisis within the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe government is not entirely surprising. Its
crisis is largely made up of the vast chasm that exists between
the reformist expectations it generated during the two election campaigns, and the actual delivery of those promises by
the government during its first half year in office. Failure of
reformist governments to fulfill the reformist promises made
during an election campaign is not a new thing. It happened
to the reformist Poeples Alliance (PA) government in Sri
Lanka in 1994. It was repeated during 2002-2003 when the
United National Party (UNP) came to power with a reformist agenda.
The problem this time around has two dimensions. The
country can hardly afford a third-time failure which is more
dangerous politically than in the two previous occasions. Second, the key players of the government have abandoned their
adherence to the very principles of good governance which
they themselves advocated and popularized just one-and-half
years ago.
The Yahapalana regimes governance failure is starkly
visible in four areas: (a) eradicating political and bureaucratic
6

corruption, (b) managing the economy, (c) the peace-building and reconciliation project, and (d) constitutional reform.
In all these areas, the performance record shows that the
government has been ineffective, inexperienced, inept and
incompetent.
Corruption
The promise to eradicate corruption contained two basic
commitments. The first was to make the new government
exemplary in good governance by inaugurating a culture of
politics and governance free of corruption. That entailed that
ministers and officials of the new government were not only
corruption-free, but also appeared to be so. The second was
the launching of investigations, leading to prosecution, into
corruption allegations against the politicians and officials of
the previous government.
On both these commitments, the governments performance record has been unsatisfactory. In particular, it does
not satisfy those who campaigned for a regime change
precisely on account of corruption-free governance. The
slowness and delays in investigations and prosecution of
the allegedly corrupt politicians and officials of the previous
regime are probably due to institutional and procedural
reasons as well. A Yahapalana regime has to work within
the limits of the Rule of Law and democratic procedures.
It cannot arbitrarily arrest, torture, lock up and hurl before
courts its political opponents merely because there are stories
and suspicions of corruption and abuse of power. Yahapalanaya requires procedural fidelity in corruption investigations,
particularly when deposed political opponents are the targets
of suspicion and allegations.
This has posed a huge dilemma for the government from
the very beginning. Sri Lankas law enforcement agencies
the police, Attorney Generals department and courts
suffered a severe institutional collapse during the past
United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) administration.
Large-scale white-collar corruption, the so-called financial
crimes, involving professional politicians, senior government
officials and big businessmen are complex affairs. These are
not crimes committed by amateurs. Rather they are organized crimes, sometimes interspersed with cross-border and
global transactions. Successful investigation and prosecution
of such crimes would be time-consuming even by European
standards.
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ESSAY

However, these delays have posed a problem for the government because of the public perception that the two power
centers of the government have entered into separate deals
with politicians of the Rajapaksa-camp to serve their own
political agendas. This deal-making is very much a part of
the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) propaganda that, for
understandable reasons, is targeting the governments moral
claims to Yahapalanaya. The governments failure to counter
this propaganda comes from two sources. First, the governments opening of doors to corrupt elements of the Rajapaksa regime under the banner of national unity government
has given the impression to the public that the post-election
Yahapalana regime is a coalition of the corrupt. The second
is the growing public perception that the ministers of the
Yahapalana regime have also resumed the usual business of
corruption, while at the same time calling the Rajapaksa
kettle black. Social media has been quite effective in creating
this particular public perception.
In brief, what is apparent now is that the Yahapalana
government has already lost the propaganda war for Yahapalanaya. Its moral claims to clean, corruption free, and
transparent governance suffer from a fairly serious deficit of
credibility.
Managing the Economy
It has been an open secret that the Yahapalana government
inherited a debt-ridden economy in serious crisis from the
UPFA. Repairing it requires a herculean effort. The Yahapalana crowd, particularly those in the PMs camp, are obviously
aware of it. However, all the steps they have taken to correct
the economy have not worked as yet. Worse still, Sri Lankas
economic crisis is becoming unmanageable, particularly in a
tricky global environment.
Here too, the Yahapalana governments failure is two-fold.
The first is the lack of a well thought out vision and programme to re-build the economy with short, medium and
long-term strategies marked by policy clarity and consistency.
Although the Prime Minister and Dr. Harsha de Silva had
initially talked about a social market economy, the governments actual economic policy became disastrously contradictory between its interim budget in early 2015 and the annual
budget in November. The lack of policy consistency, as
demonstrated in the haphazard reversal of several key budget
proposals, led to serious erosion of public confidence in the
new governments economic recovery strategy, if it had one
at all.
The second failure was part of the general malaise of the
Yahapalana government its inability to tell the people the
actual nature and the severity of the economic crisis well
in advance. When the government leaders began to tell the
people that the economy was in a really bad shape, it was a
little too late. Although in actual fact Sri Lankas present economic crisis has been in the making for nearly a decade, the
progressive decline of the productive capacity of the countrys
export economy is a legacy of the war economy that saw the
Polity | Volume 7, Issue 1

expansion of the service and financial sectors at the expense

of the manufacturing sectors. The mounting debt crisis is
a direct product of the borrowandinvest policy of the
previous government. The lack of a major increase in foreign
direct investments has been part of a global pattern, amidst
periodic shifts in the global economy. The crisis has also been
exacerbated by the short-term prosperity strategies of the
previous government.
The UNP has boasted about its economic policy wizardry,
with experts and technocrats galore. However, the record of
Yahapalanaya for eighteen months only suggests otherwise.
Peace-building and Reconciliation
One of the most promising commitments of the Yahapalana coalition, during as well as after the January 2015 transition, was to re-launch the peace-building and reconciliation
project with the active participation of the Tamil and Muslim
communities and international well-wishers. The latter
included the UN, the USA, Europe, and India. The overwhelming electoral support the government received from
Tamil and Muslim voters and parties provided a strong foundation for new peace-building and reconciliation initiatives.
The government has also found in Mangala Samaraweera
a foreign minister capable of speaking to the international community in a language of democracy, reconciliation
and peace. Additionally, the government has sent out some
commendable positive signals, such as the singing of the
national anthem in Tamil, to the minority and international
communities.
However, the slowness in the implementation of commitments made in the joint resolution at the UNHRC in
Geneva point to an emerging problem for the government
both in its domestic and foreign policy fronts. Particularly
disappointing in this regard is the governments slowness in
initiating concrete steps towards transitional justice and a
postwar political settlement to the ethnic conflict. These are
themes that are foremost in the minds of Tamil people and
Tamil political parties.
On the question of Transitional Justice, the government
is obviously under pressure from the military establishment.
The Rajapaksa camp is happy to arouse Sinhalese nationalist sentiments and even military opposition to the process,
seizing upon proposed Transitional Justice mechanisms such
as international/hybrid courts. Within the government
coalition too, there is opposition to most of the Transitional
Justice proposals. President Sirisena has taken a position of
waver and indecision on this vital issue, leaving room for the
speculation that the President and the Prime Minister do not
see eye to eye on peace-building and reconciliation.
More worrying are the signs that the two power centers of
the government are not coordinating their efforts to implement a joint peace-building and reconciliation programme.
It is now public knowledge that President Sirisena is not
consulted either by the Prime Minister or the Minster of
7

ESSAY

External Affairs on any of these matters. This does not bode

well for the governments flagship project of peace-building
and reconciliation. Its failure will have serious domestic
as well as international consequences. If the Yahapalana
government adopts a strategy of mere promises and active
procrastination on the Geneva commitments, the loss of the
present international support from the West and India will
soon be irretrievable.
Constitutional Reform
Constitutional reform is another exciting initiative for
which the Yahapalana government has claimed, and received,
a great deal of political credit. The 19th Amendment to the
Constitution that curtailed the powers of the President and
restored some measure of autonomy to parliament, received
near universal applause, although it did not please those
who were committed to the total abolition of the executive
presidential system. However, the government promised to
continue the process and complete it within a limited and
specific time frame.
The public consultation process, which is now over, is
a commendable measure to engage the citizens, even to a
limited extent, in the constitutional reform process. Its report
provides reform proposals from a wide variety of perspectives.
As the report clearly reflects, Sri Lankan society is deeply
divided on fundamental issues of constitutional reform such
as the nature of the state, the place of Buddhism, devolution,
minority rights, and electoral reforms.
The task of the government now is to take this process
forward through the Constitutional Assembly mechanism.
However, the prospects for its success do not seem all that
bright. Among the reasons for this is the lack of consensus
among the coalition partners of the government on almost all
the key reform issues. Some are for the total abolition of the
presidential system while others are for its retention. Some
are for the continuation of the unitary state model while others want enhanced devolution. Small parties want only minor
changes to the existing system of proportional representation
while the big parties have been pushing for a mixed system.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister and the UNP want a
totally new constitution. The President and the Sri Lanka
Freedom Party (SLFP) under his leadership do not support
the UNPs approach. They first want electoral reforms and
to move forward on a step-by-step basis. These differences between the two centers of the government have now
become public, giving confusing signals to the people. If the
two centers do not work together for a joint constitutional
reform project, Sri Lanka will have lost another opportunity
for political reforms.
Two Power Centers
The question of two power centers within the Yahapalana
coalition government seems to loom large over its stability
and continuity. In theory, the two power centers, one at the
executive and the other at the legislature, identified with the
SLFP and UNP respectively, are not a bad thing. It provides
8

the much needed institutional mechanism of checksand

balances, so crucially needed by modern democratic governance as a bulwark against compulsions towards authoritarianism. Sri Lankas experience in illiberal governance since
the 1970s has been largely due to the absence of formal or
informal systems of checks and balances to prevent the arbitrary and tyrannical exercise of state power.
There is also a flip side to it, as it is now becoming clear.
The two power centers are developing their own rival political agendas in view of the forthcoming local governmental
elections, as well as parliamentary and presidential elections
scheduled for several years later. The primary reason for this
somewhat unusual situation is the unfortunate condition in
which President Sirisena finds himself as the leader of the
Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United Peoples
Freedom Alliance (UPFA). He became the presidential candidate of the joint opposition late last year by defecting from
both these entities. Soon after being elected as the president,
the leadership of the SLFP and the UPFA the party and the
coalition that functioned as his primary political rivals was
forced on him. The SLFPs party constitution says that the
president of the country, if he is from SLFP, should be the
party leader. When elected as the President from the joint
opposition, Mr. Sirisena was still a member of the SLFP and
the UPFA!
The SLFP faction of the Yahapalana government, except
President Sirisena, for good reason, does not appear to share
the Yahapalana agenda. There are no compelling reasons for
them to do so since they were not partners in the Yahapalana
coalition. They in fact campaigned vehemently against it.
For reasons of power and personal politics, they are with the
Yahapalana government, even occupying cabinet positions,
providing a power-base and parliamentary votes to President
Sirisena. This is the strange composition and outcome of the
so-called national unity government, so ardently promoted
by Prime Minister Wickremasinghe. For all practical purposes, the induction of a section of the SLFP to the government
has undermined and weakened the Yahapalana agenda and
its political legitimacy. Thus, the Yahapalana regime is now
caught up in a trap of its own making. Unless well managed,
the contradictions between the governments two power
centers may even lead to the coalitions collapse.
Already there are signs that these contradictions are sharpening. The SLFP ministers over two dozen in numbers
seem to be rather uncomfortable with sharing governmental power with their traditional rival, the UNP and the
much-hated opponent, Ranil Wickremasinghe. They would
be happier if a government of the SLFP, minus Mahinda
Rajapaksa and his family, is formed under President Sirisena
and a Prime minister was appointed from among their own
ranks. And these are indeed sentiments and desires some of
the SLFP minsters have publicly expressed.
Whither the Yahapalana Government?
What will this entail with regard to the future of the Sirisena-Wickremasinghe coalition government? Will it collapse, as
some have been predicting and anticipating? There is actually
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ESSAY

no likelihood of the government collapsing, the primary

reason being the inability of the joint opposition, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa and his non-SLFP parliamentary colleagues,
to sustain a credible parliamentary threat to the government.
In fact, the joint-opposition is in disarray, despite some early
signs of it emerging as a credible threat to the government.
President Sirisenas main success in the domestic front is
his uncanny ability to keep the Rajapaksa threat at bay by
using tactics that are not in the Yahapalanaya text book. For
example, offering cabinet positions to Rajapaksa loyalists as
material inducement to change their political allegiance can
in no way be appreciated as a Yahapalanaya act!
Thus, the government will continue with a secure parliamentary majority, but with weakened public support,

Polity | Volume 7, Issue 1

diminishing political credibility and an increasing legitimacy

deficit. If the government continues with its clinical disregard
for its growing credibility and legitimacy crisis, it will soon
have damaging consequences for the countrys democratic
political order. Self-serving politicians and their party cohorts
continue to make their families and bank managers happy,
amidst growing popular discontent and even international
isolation. Another chance for political change and reform,
with so much popular backing and expectations, will go
to waste. Citizens will turn negative and cynical about the
capacity of politicians and political parties to give leadership
to any significant process of political transformation. The
retrieval of the democratic reform agenda, after such a severe
setback, would once again be difficult for some time to come.