Editorial : The circus of commissions and committees

Many headlines these days have been on the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) appointed to study the 13th Amendment and changes proposed by some parties in the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA), while one party the Jathika Hela Urumaya has even introduced a private members’ motion with a 19th amendment proposing major changes to the 13th amendment.  

 The UPFA’s socialist parties have strongly opposed any changes to the 13th Amendment while Minister and Eelam People’s Democratic Party Leader, Douglas Devananda said over the weekend that as many as 38 UPFA MPs wanted the 13th Amendment kept unchanged when elections were held to the Northern Provincial Council in September.

While we see confusion, contradictions and conflicting opinions in the ruling UPFA, India is insisting there should be no changes to the 13th Amendment because this amendment came through the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987. India claims a bilateral agreement between two sovereign countries, according to international laws can be amended only after consultation between the two countries and not on a unilateral basis. India’s National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon who was in Sri Lanka this week reiterated his country’s position when he met President Mahinda Rajapaksa. The President responded by saying the decision of the Government would be based on the report by the PSC. But the PSC which began work this week comprises only UPFA members with opposition parties and independent analysts describing it as being more of a Government select committee. Even one UPFA party member Justice Minister and SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem described the PSC as more like a Cabinet subcommittee. Mr. Hakeem’s party and even SLFP ministers including Rajitha Senaratne, Dilan Perera and Reginald Cooray are insisting that any changes to important provisions in the 13th Amendment may lead to serious international problems for Sri Lanka.



 Against this backdrop, many independent analysts wonder where this PSC too will end up and whether it will go where most commissions and committees had gone—the garbage dumps.

The main Opposition United National Party spokesman Gayantha Karunatilake had plenty of substance and validity when he charged recently that the reports of a multitude of commissions and committees were piling up higher than the notorious Bloemendhal garbage dump. Citing two recent cases he pointed out that committees had been appointed to probe the worst ever fishing disaster last month and the latest racket in the import of inferior quality fuel because of the mysterious breakdown in the Sapugaskanda oil refinery. He expressed concern and millions of people would agree with him--that these committees like hundreds of others would  finally go nowhere, with a waste of time, a huge amount in public funds and their voluminous reports piling up on the shelves of government offices. Opposition parties, independent analysts and millions of people believe that the Rajapaksa regime like most other governments if not more so appoints commissions or committees just to buy time till raging storms blow away and little or nothing happens after that.

Even the once powerful parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), which once made powerful reports exposing fraud and corruption in state departments today appears to have become a loudspeaker with no electric power. The COPE headed by senior minister DEW Gunasekara still makes shocking disclosures about some state institutions but its reports are lost in the mortuary of the two-thirds majority.    

The latest case was in the international controversy over the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC). The Rajapaksa regime itself appointed the LLRC and told the people of Sri Lanka and the international community that the LLRC would help this country to find its own solutions to the ethnic and other conflicts. But when the LLRC issued its report and recommendations after a long delay the recommendations were welcomed by the international community but the Government got cold feet because it apparently does not want to antagonise some parties in the ruling coalition. So like in the case of most of the commissions and committees, we are neither here nor there and going wrong almost everywhere.