What has been reported of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s luncheon meeting with newspaper editors on Monday (27) reveals the unenviable position he finds himself in. He seems somewhat upset that things are not moving in the direction he desires not only because of the pandemic which has upended virtually everything but also due to lack of teamwork. This is certainly not something he bargained for when he chose to enter active politics after the 2015 regime change. He had made a name for himself as a technocrat and doer when he was the Defense Secretary. He must have thought it would be smooth sailing for him after securing the coveted presidency.
Sri Lankans including those who did not vote for Gotabaya expected him to bring about radical changes in every sphere, and do for the country something similar to what he had done for the Colombo city and other urban centers. He has since faced the challenge of living up to the people’s high expectations, and the public does not seem impressed by his performance so far.
It may be said that once a military officer, always a military officer. President Rajapaksa has a military mindset. He still thinks and acts like a military officer although he has been on civvy street for a long time. He has a fetish for discipline and order, and wants things done with military precision. But politics is a different ball game characterized by a chronic lack of discipline and absolutely no order. In short, it is a metaphor for chaos.
The public service is also a mess, and the President’s efforts to bring about some order in it have been in vain. In the military, nobody dares defy orders, and does exactly as told, but it is not so in the public service. The President is reported to have told the newspaper editors that the Agriculture Department officials had not implemented his organic fertilizer scheme properly, and that was the main reason why it had not yielded the desired results. Such a thing is simply unthinkable in the military.
The President also lamented at the above-mentioned meeting that he was not happy with the support he received from his ministers for some of his programs, according to media reports. This is something to be expected in politics where everybody is interested only in what is beneficial to him or her either politically or financially. Not many ruling party politicians were well-disposed towards his ‘A discussion with the village’ program, which he launched to interact with the ordinary people directly; they considered it an intrusion.
Only Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage is apparently interested in the President’s pet project, organic farming, but he, too, will run away, given half a chance. He must be hoping and praying that he be given a different ministry.
Not that President Rajapaksa did not give serious thought to building his team in advance. He rallied the support of many professionals and academics under the Viyathmaga banner even before he announced his intention to run for President, and immediately after securing the presidency he appointed many Viyathmaga members to key government positions to help him carry out his policies expeditiously. Among them are many university dons. But it is doubtful whether their performance has been satisfactory. According to newspaper accounts of the President’s interaction with the newspaper editors on Monday, he is not happy with the overall performance of his team of intellectuals. He has said something to the effect that some of them lack pragmatism and common touch. This is a fair assessment of his team members who are required to interact with the public and make decisions which directly impact the latter’s lives. Their performance will make the government either popular or unpopular.
Before the last presidential election, Viyathmaga was touted as a brain trust, which would act as the engine of a government to be formed by Gotabaya after being elected President. But it has become something like a Sri Lanka Railways locomotive; it lacks pulling power and develops faults.
President Rajapaksa also became dependent on ex-military officers to revitalize the state sector and provide a boost to the implementation of his policy program. He even drew criticism from his political rivals for what was called an attempt to militarize the public service, but these appointments do not seem to have worked for him mainly because former military officers are not familiar with the running of the administrative apparatus of the state, and they alone cannot revolutionize the state service which epitomizes inefficiency and incompetence.
The Consumer Affairs Authority of Sri Lanka has had a former top military officer as its Chairman, but its performance has been abysmal. It stands accused of being too impotent to take on errant traders and powerful rice millers who exploit consumers with impunity. When ex-military officers were appointed to vital positions in the public service, it was thought that they would be as efficient as Gotabaya had been as the Secretary of Defense and Urban Development.
President Rajapaksa is a man in a hurry, so to speak. He wants things done extremely fast, and his style is similar to that of the late President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who succeeded in keeping the public service under his thumb and manipulating it to achieve his development goals. When people were not satisfied with the performance of state officials, they could go straight to President Premadasa, who made himself available as early as 4.00 am at his residence, Sucharitha, and seek redress. A man of action, Premadasa ensured that everyone who went to him seeking help was not disappointed. But President Rajapaksa has not been able to impress the public in the same manner.
There have been instances where President Rajapaksa, too, tried to galvanize the public service into action but without much success. Disappointed at the tardy progress in the implementation of his orders, he once declared at a public event in full view of television viewers that his orders had to take precedence over circulars. But public officials are wary of carrying out anyone’s orders in that manner because of what happened to them following the 2015 regime change; legal action was taken against many public officials suspected of having gone out of their way at the behest of the previous Rajapaksa government to act in violation of financial and administrative regulations. The worst fear that a public official has is to be sacked and deprived of his or her pension.
It has been reported that President Rajapaksa, at Monday’s meeting, sought to attribute the inability of his government to optimize its performance to the pandemic, which had crippled the economy and led to a foreign exchange crisis, shortcomings of the public service and lack of support from his own team. The list would have been complete if he had added to it his lack of political acumen. If he had been in active politics long enough, holding ministerial posts, probably he would have been able to assess public officials and the members of his team much better, and act accordingly.
President Rajapaksa has been on a steep learning curve. Learning while struggling to manage multiple crises could be an uphill task. He has three years left of his term, and whether he and his team members will be able to haul themselves up by their bootstraps remains to be seen.
