Nikkei Asian Review: Sri Lanka: Tuesday,
February 28, 2017.
Since
November 2012, the students of St. Joseph's College, an all-male secondary
school in Colombo, have watched a landmark tower rising over their backyard.
The construction work rattled some of the classrooms closest to the Lotus
Tower, as the 350 meter freestanding structure is called, and put paid to the
students' former habits of scampering across the grounds behind the school to
fish in a nearby lake with improvised rods.
Some of the
school's alumni scoffed at the $104 million tower, funded largely by the
Export-Import Bank of China and commissioned by the autocratic former Sri
Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. They dismissed it as "another
Rajapaksa vanity project," adding to widespread skepticism that the
communications tower, once complete, with lotus petals and antenna, will be the
tallest building in South Asia.
A stronger
voice has delivered a harsher rebuke on this "prestige project", as
officials describe it. In early February, Sunil Handunnetti, chairman of the
Committee on Public Enterprises, an influential parliamentary body that
investigates financial losses in state institutions, said the tower was a waste
of money and a drain on the economy. It is among 15 state-sponsored projects
that have depleted government coffers by 110 billion rupees ($733 million),
through excess spending and financial irregularities, the committee's latest
report revealed.
'Game
changer'
But now, Sri
Lanka's Right to Information Act (RTI), a new law that came into effect on Feb.
3, holds out a promise that the public can intervene and query investments in
state-backed projects while they are still on the drawing board. It is an
unprecedented weapon that analysts describe as a "game changer" for
transparency and accountability in Sri Lanka's political life.
This law,
approved unanimously in the 225-member parliament, spares no government leader,
senior bureaucrat or public institution from public scrutiny. The strength of
its 43 clauses means that private companies, if they have dealings with a state
body, and even non-governmental organizations can be targeted.
An
independent RTI commission, formed in the wake of the law's passage, has the
teeth to go after recalcitrant public officials who stonewall information
queries from the public, journalists or anti-corruption activists. The law
compels officials to respond within a month, or face a two-year jail term or a
fine of 50,000 rupees. "That is the stick," remarked one
anti-corruption campaigner.
"The
public can petition the commission to inquire if the information they wanted is
not forthcoming, and the commission can take the matter to court if
necessary," Kishali Pinto Jayawardena, a member of the RTI commission,
told the Nikkei Asian Review. "The RTI in Sri Lanka has now become a right
that prevails over other rights and also prevails over every other law to the
extent it is inconsistent with the RTI law."
The law made
it to parliament after a nearly 20-year struggle, led by the Editors' Guild of
Sri Lanka, the leading body of the country's newspaper editors. It was first
conceived in 1998 as a Freedom of Information Act, and drafts were presented to
government in 2003. But political turmoil and subsequent opposition from the
Rajapaksa regime stymied its progress until Rajapaksa's shock defeat by
Maithripala Sirisena, now president, at the January 2015 presidential polls.
Sirisena's
election campaign had included a promise to pass the RTI law, which was on his
government's to-do list for its first 100 days in office. "We got 90% of
what we wanted in this law," said Sinha Ratnatunga, former president of
the Editors' Guild. "Now we need to raise awareness and encourage the
media and the public to use it."
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