By
C.A.Chandraprema
Last Wednesday, the same day on which the Australian media broke the story about President Sirisena, 85 officials of the ministry of finance serving as ex-officio directors on the boards of 280 public corporations resigned from their directorships saying that they will not resume their duties unless steps were taken to ensure their future security and professional respect. They had stated that the Chairmen and CEO’s appointed to the bodies in which they served as representatives of the Treasury were political appointees and that they too have had to face investigations and have been arrested and remanded due to the actions of these political appointees and that therefore serving in these public bodies or in tender boards and technical evaluation committees would be inimical to their wellbeing.
They had pointed out that the representative of the treasury will have to bear greater responsibility for any decision taken by these bodies. The Prime Minister’s cryptic response to this mass resignation has been to say that these officials will not be reappointed to those positions and that new persons will be appointed.
The issue here is that those who have resigned are 85 of the senior-most officers of the Ministry of Finance. It’s not as if there are hundreds of officers of similar rank in the ministry who can be appointed as directors of public enterprises or as members of tender boards. By saying that these officials will be replaced, it seems obvious that the UNP-SLFP unity government is trying to run the country the way the UNP conducted the 1981 Jaffna DDC election. Due to the reign of terror launched by PLOTE and other Tamil terrorist organisations, sufficient election staff could not be found among government employees in Jaffna. Then the government took steps to bring election staff from other parts of the country to man the polling booths in Jaffna. When the election staff from the south arrived in Jaffna for election duty by train from Colombo, they saw Jaffna in flames after the police went on the rampage in reprisals for the killing of policemen by PLOTE and they went back in the same train.
Thereupon the government got the peons, minor employees and the like whom the UNP at that time had at their beck and call, to come to Jaffna for election duty. It was they who conducted the Jaffna DDC election. Even at 10.30 in the night peons were wandering around with ballot boxes not knowing where to take them. It is no wonder that there were stories about ballot boxes being found under the beds of places where accommodation was provided for election staff. The question that now arises is whether this country is to be run the way the then UNP government ran the Jaffna DDC election by replacing experienced staff with all kinds of upstarts and riff raff.
When parliament met on Friday, Joint Opposition member Bandula Gunawardene raised the question about the Treasury officials who had resigned from the boards of statutory bodies and government owned enterprises due to fear of being arrested and remanded by the FCID and about private sector individuals serving in government director boards in a honorary capacity also being arrested and remanded. In replying to him the prime minister said that some officials serving in the boards of various government bodies had resigned and that if they are scared, they will not go back to those positions. Furthermore he said that the presence of treasury officials in organisations like SriLankan Airlines and the CPC had not prevented those organisations from running at a loss. Explaining the immediate reason for the resignation of these officials, the PM explained that money belonging to the Tourism Promotion Bureau had been spent on the Uva provincial council election and that this has to be investigated. He stated that there are plenty of people in his party who are willing to fill the vacancies created by the resignation of the treasury officials. COPE is obviously going to have more work than it can cope with.
Courtesy:Sunday Island