Sri Lanka Anti-Corruption Program

I read a very interesting article in the ‘World Review’ supplement in The Island of 15.02.07 which published an article from Asian News Network, under the caption “Bangladesh Corrupt politicians, Civil Servants, Magnates — None will be spared. The following extracts are reproduced for the information of readers who may have missed reading that article.

Bangladesh Army Chief Lt. Gen. Moeen U Ahmed said the armed forces are assisting the government in its crusade against corruption that has eaten up the vitals of the nation.

About corruption that had bedeviled the nation, the Army Chief said “Corruption had engulfed every sphere of life. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Lashing out at dishonest Politicians without naming anyone Gen., Moeen said. “It is not possible to count the enormous wealth they have accumulated. Their irresistible lust for wealth led them to gobble up the sheets allotted by the government for distribution as relief among the poor.

Is not the action of the Army Chief of Bangladesh a lesson for us too? Let the President of this country, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the army, take action to eradicate corruption, act soon, irrespective of political alliances, personal or party loyalties and other considerations. This is possible and could be expected of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in view of his recent move to remove three ministers.

‘Fiat justitia, ruat caelum’ — Let justice be done though heavens may fall.

G. A. D. Sirimal

The Bribery Commission has a new HOTLINE for reporting instances of corruption–including bribery, nepotism, fraud, embezzlement and extortion.

DIAL 1954 IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO MAKE A COMPLAINT!
Will this result in more complaints? Will the general public have faith and trust in the hotline?

What do people think about this–comments?

If you would like the current draft Freedom of Information Bill passed into law, you can do the following:

1) Write letters of support to:

a. H.E. Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka

b. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the President

c. Suhada Gamlath Secretary Ministry of Justice

d. Hon. Amarasiri Dodangoda, Minister of Justice

e. W.B. Ganegala, Secretary Ministry of Mass Media and information

f. Hon. Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, Minister of Mass Media and Information

g. Members of Parliament who represent you, or whom you know personally

h. General Secretary (or other influential members) of your political party

2) Inform your friends and family about the importance of access to information. The Right to Information can:

a. Expose corruption, making government and the economy more efficient

b. Expose environmental hazards that threaten health and livelihoods

c. Reduce the danger of human rights violations

d. Increase popular participation in government and development

3) Mobilize organizations that you are associated with:

a. To pass a formal motion in favor of the Bill

b. To issue a press release stating that your organization has adopted a position in favor of the Bill.

4) Form coalitions with other organizations that are advocating for the passing of this bill into law.

5) If you are a journalist, editor, publisher etc, use the media to raise awareness about

a. The status of the draft bill

b. What people can do to support this

c. The importance of the bill

d. Similar campaigns in other countries

6) Organize petitions, and obtain signatures from interested citizens

7) Hold public meetings, and/or organize a conference or workshop on right to information.

8) Write a letter to the newspapers

9) Organize street theatre performances that deal with the Right to Information

For more information please visit www.ard-acp.com

Keynote address delivered by Mrinal Pande, Editor of the Hindustan, at a seminar on the Draft Freedom of Information Act titled “Freedom of Information: From Proposal to Law” organized by the Sri Lanka Anti-Corruption Program and the Sri Lanka Press Institute.

In India, as in the rest of the world, knowledge is power. Those who wish to keep power limited within a particular group or groups learn early on, that they must exercise a total control over information. That makes it necessary that the information available to insiders is encoded in a language not easily accessed by outsiders. There is therefore not much difference between the ancient Brahminical Gurus making their disciples promise thrice, before imparting the mysterious Tantrik knowledge in Sanskrit, the language of the Gods, that they’d keep it secret and guard it with their lives; and the Official Secrets Act Of 1923, promulgated in India by the British rulers.

It is also no accident that by using Sanskrit, then Persian and later English, the ruling elites in India, from Chankya’s time to the present day, put important information and all refined forms of wisdom out of the reach of the lower castes, the tribals and women, who were not allowed to learn the formal power languages. Any defiance of this rule was further made punishable by ostracization or death by torture.

Even after Independence, a linguistically diverse private-public funded educational system in India has continued. It has produced two clear groups: those who are proficient in English, and can therefore access all higher forms of learning; and those who have been educated in the vernacular medium and must content themselves with low visibility, low income and high risk jobs. True, our legislators are now mostly from the erstwhile lower or backward castes and speak in the vernaculars, but our Executive, as also the Judiciary and members of the small but highly influential English media, are largely minted out of the first group. As a result, most issues pertaining to the Constitution and civil rights continue to be debated, analysed and decided in English. In the sphere of higher learning, in the best colleges subjects like Journalism, Law, Medicine, Business Management, Information Technology and Engineering are still taught only in the English. This is producing highly learned and skilled, but socially monocultural professionals out of touch with groups whose rights are violated the most, but who are least equipped to protest and regain them.

As a bilingual woman journalist working in the vernacular Hindi media, while covering the various SAARC, CHOGM and NAM Meets on Human Rights and Democracy, my work has led me to witness war stories that would make you laugh out or scream, depending on which side of the Right to Information fence you stand. I found that translations of speeches by the heads of nations were routinely available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, but not in Hindi. Given such experience of professional discrimination and denial of vital information, it was not surprising that the vernacular journalists were the most enthusiastic supporters of the Right to Information movement when it was first started by the Hind Mazdoor Kissan Sangathan in Rajasthan. The difficult passage of the Bill is revealing of how the Empire may strike back.

In 1995, the Press Council of India drew up the first blueprint for the RTI. The government, as was expected, did not take it up for notification for the next two years. It was said to be “too radical”. In 1997, the veteran consumer activist H.D. Shourie chaired a working group of ten, and created another draft. This too was not introduced in the Parliament. Eight, as it turned out, of its ten members were government servants. It was finally revoked in the Freedom of Information Bill 2000.

The Right to Information (RTI) finally came into force in October 2005 all over India, making India the 55^th country in the world to have this Act. This happened only after an intense debate during which members of public, intellectuals and journalists also took to the streets a couple of times. Since language was the master key, terminology was the single most fought over issue. Freedom of Information, it was felt by the supporters which included several retired bureaucrats, implied a mere lack of interference, easily explicable as a grand ‘hands off’ policy. The term ‘Right to Information’ put the onus for maximum disclosure on those that had denied it. Only nine states of Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Tamilnadu and Jammu and Kashmir had so far passed state acts and reports about bureaucratic stone walling and slow deliberations were frequent.

A year later this became the first Act in India whose birthday was celebrated publically. Sadly many of its guardian angels boycotted the occasion. They were dismayed by the watering down of the original proposals.

The Act gave a billion people the rights so far enjoyed by only 800 legislators. As it stands today, it is a part of the Fundamental Rights granted to all Indian citizens under Article 19 (1) of the Constitution that grants freedom of speech and expression to all, regardless of caste, creed or gender. The definition of information under RTI is any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, emails, opinions, advises, press releases, circulars, orders, log books, samples, data material, electronic or otherwise and information relating to any private body accessed by public authority under any other law. Notably, the Act confers upon the citizens, the Right to Information, and not just records or documents.

Observers still feel that the old acts such as the Official Secrets Act of 1923 and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 will need to be repealed before the new law can be evoked effectively. Traditional habits, they feel, die hard, especially when there is much to be hidden from prying eyes. They are also unhappy that the Act also excludes Cabinet papers, including records of the Council of Ministers, Secretaries and other government officials. This shields a lot of decision making processes from mandatory disclosure and is not explicable since the parliamentary proceedings are now being televised live. Critics like Kejriwal and Aruna Roy also point out that without a mechanism for speedy and deterrent punishments for delays or refusals in place, much of the power of the Act may get dissipated. Only 43% of the ministries, they point out have taken notice of half the cases. The Central Information Commission received some 3059 cases in one year out of which it dismissed 71% without a hearing. Each month 300 cases reach it but each hearing takes three to four months. This makes the notice period of thirty days meaningless.

Arvind Kejriwal finds three major problem areas in implementation: slowness, lack of proper records and record maintenance, and non implementation of penalties suggested. He has also noticed that the level of competence and knowledge about the Act among the Commissioners appointed varies from state to state. Their mostly being superannuated bureaucrats is also questionable.

Exemptions granted under the Act are, however, not absolute and public authority may allow access to exempted information if “public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests.” This provision has immense potential, and hopefully, in time this coupled with the advances in information technology, will unlock the doors to information for all citizens. A great deal of spade work obviously needs to be done to sensitize the Commissions and implement the provisions of the Act. What is even more important at this point is that the enabling provisions be made available to all Indians in languages they understand. This, we in the vernacular media realize, is only the first step in a long struggle. And it can progress only if the ordinary citizens, those who have been denied the most, are with us all the way.

In Hindustan we started a campaign called Ghoos Ko Ghoonsa Abhiyan (Strike a Blow Against Corruption). We carried it out jointly with NGOs Parivartan and Kabir, followed by our Patna and Lucknow editions on a local basis. All information released by NGOs or the government was prominently displayed along with information on how to handle the new Act and whom to contact and how on our front pages for a whole fortnight. We also permitted readers to send short messages on the cell phone lines provided by us. The results were astounding. Queries covered areas from personal (pensions not received, bills inflated, compensations not being released etc) to serious lapses in developmental work.

RTI has been exercised in grilling the academia and has succeeded in reopening of answer sheets and revealing the abysmally low number PhDs granted by various publically funded departments. In civic areas, it has led to scrutinizing of various development works and low payments of wages to labour, and forged entries in muster rolls. Lack of departmental transparency in individuals’ efforts in obtaining ration cards, passports and similar benefits has also been thrown into focus.

Problem areas remain and they are mostly in the field of implementation and delays. Between October 2005 and April 2006, the Central Information Commission received more than 600 appeals and could take decisions on only 99 cases. The States too have been tardy in implementation and quick to put up the costs. In UP they slapped a fee of Rs 400 per application for processing. In Maharashtra they filed away 33,500 applications received under the previous State Act when the RTI came into being and declared that they want to begin on a clean slate! In Orissa, the file management system is poor and a CD of information sought costs 100 if you ask the Commission for it. It does not match the market price, so the poorer applicants are deterred.

But people are learning to use the Act collectively. In Maharashtra the strawberry farmers were able to beat back government efforts to lay water pipes on their lands by asking for documents that gave the government the right to do so. Similarly a coalition of some NGOs carried out a successful social audit of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme and a daily, The Indian Express, forced a leading public school to reveal data that showed how public schools were denying admissions to children from poorer families.

Despite this as awareness about the Act grows, people are using it to make their lives better. Some samples:

• Calcutta University has been directed by the Chief Information Commissioner of the state to allow an aggrieved B Com examinee to take a look at his answer sheets. This is to make his exam more transparent.
• An RTI enquiry relating to the amount of public money being spent on bureaucrats appointed by the courts to monitor land ceiling in Delhi, has revealed that some of them are drawing extremely high remunerations. They are also using high-end cars, thus claiming petrol allowances higher than their salary.
• Reports published in our paper about a dastardly serial killer who hid his victims bodies in a drain near his house for two years, led the locals to file a query under the Act to ask when and how often should the drains have been cleaned? The next day the Municipality outsourced the work to private agencies and work started on all drains in the area.

“Kindly send mailing (sic) address for Lifelong Grievance”, one of our readers messaged us.

There is life yet in the old Republic. People will live to fight another day.

by Lincoln Wijeyesinghe (taken from the Island “Opinion” on 12/20/2006)

Recent media reports disclosed that Sri Lanka had the dubious honour of being near the top for Corruption in Asia.

There was another report about steps contemplated to control Corruption.

When brazen bribery is practised at the highest level by offering Ministerial Portfolios to attract crossovers from Opposition Parties, as publicly admitted by a prominent Minister of the Government (even after signing a MoU to Co-operate on National Issues! while another Prominent Minister stated that elections cannot be won without telling lies!) what can you expect from lesser mortals?

It is unfortunate that people with a sense of honour and self respect have become a rare breed in our Political System.

God help our country if our ignorant, easily fooled people do not open their eyes and elect better quality people into the legislature!

“What right do we have,” muses Dhruv Dhawan as he walks through New Delhi to shoot a film, “to go to other people’s countries and say: ‘this isn’t right, you can’t do this’? Every country has its own system.”

It seems an incongruous view of corruption from a director whose first feature film focusses on governmental abuse of land rights. From Dust, an observational documentary filmed in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of 2004’s devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, implies that displaced people were robbed of their land and frightened into relocating so that foreign business could build hotels on the coast.

Following two survivors and an Australian aid worker, Dhawan describes scenes in which the government forces coastal dwellers to move to the hills, on the pretext that it is too dangerous for them to remain by the ocean. Interspersed with painfully beautiful footage are interviews with local officials, eagerly admitting that the sites of the victims’ destroyed homes have been sold to hotel chains such as Sheraton.

Yet director Dhruv Dhawan is circumspect. Part of the reason he was able to get such admissions, he believes, is that corruption was not viewed as a problem: “You know why it was so easy? Because they don’t think it’s wrong. They just think: ‘those are poor people, and they should not be occupying prime coastal property. Other people should get that land, so that my son and his son can go to hospitality school, and manage a small hotel, and make this country richer.’ And you know what? That’s actually a strong argument to build up an economy and create jobs. But at what cost? How does it help the 700,000 homeless tsunami survivors?”

Dhawan went to Sri Lanka with a small film crew as soon as the tsunami hit on 26 December 2004. The crew left a few days later, unable to cope with the scenes of devastation. Dhawan remained, however, searching for inspiration. One month later he met Ravi, a young entrepreneur who had lost his father and sister in the tsunami but saved his mother using skills he learnt watching the US television series Baywatch. “Ravi started asking me questions,” says Dhawan, “and I thought, I could really learn something from him.” Thanks to this early friendship, a powerful documentary emerged that addresses complex issues.

Dhruv did not go to Sri Lanka looking for corruption, but there is political trickery at the heart of the film. Humanitarian assistance and relief projects present plenty of opportunities for corruption (see this month’s article on the Corruption Risk Map), but From Dust focuses on just one – the land claims of tsunami survivors and the government’s selective imposition of the “100 metre rule”.

Following the tsunami, the government implemented what is widely known as the “100 metre rule” ostensibly as a buffer zone to protect against a new tsunami. In essence, this meant that no one was allowed to rebuild their homes within one hundred metres of the sea. Displaced residents were therefore unable to rebuild on land they already owned. While the rule had some legal precedent - the Coast Conservation Act of 1981 - it had never been enforced.

At the time of the tsunami, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans were living on the coastline. Due to this dense population, it was not just a matter of moving back 100 metres. Inhabitants were forced to relocate further inland to undeveloped areas, or “flats”, some 10-14 kilometres from the coast. According to Dhawan, anyone who complained about being relocated would go out of favour with the local politicians. On good behaviour to receive government rations and funds to rebuild once they were relocated, these people rarely protested the 100 meter rule.

Dhawan followed the lives of Ravi and Cyril, tsunami survivors living in temporary tent villages, and Cameron, an Australian aid worker trying to help in the reconstruction. Ravi and Cyril are on a list of people waiting to be allocated land in the hills; Cameron questions why, given the terrifying force of the tsunami, the rule sets dwellings back only a hundred metres.

The film brilliantly intersperses the survivors’ struggles as they await information on rebuilding their homes with newspaper headlines that highlight the role of the media in creating fear of a second tsunami. This fear is reflected in Cyril’s family, who simply do not wish to remain by the ocean. They are not alone; many survivors genuinely want to move away. But the film makes clear that, contrary to the espoused ‘public safety’ justification of the 100 metre rule, the real motivation is selling the land to foreign business interests.

What seems like blatant corruption to the viewer is met by subdued acquiescence on camera. Although the film portrays the situation as grossly unfair, it is not a diatribe against the government; it does not preach against the system. It is a story of acceptance, of survival, of starting again, told through those living that reality. Ravi and Cyril are acutely aware of their plight, but they do not appear outraged. Indeed, they are portrayed not as victims, but as survivors. Their resilience to adversity and commitment to life provides another degree of depth to the film.

Another intriguing representation of human nature is provided by Dhawan’s interviews with officials from the Sri Lankan Tourist Board, who proudly boast of stimulating economic growth through tourism. The Chairman explains that if one million tourists visit Sri Lanka annually and each spends an average US $155 per day, tourism will become the country’s top foreign exchange earner by 2010. For this, the country will need 11,000 high class hotel rooms. Luxury hotels will not want to build away from the beach, he explains, so there must be exceptions to the 100 metre rule.

These officials make no attempt to cover up the land sale. Maps are victoriously thrust at the camera, proudly showing how much coastline had been “acquired”. According to Dhawan, it was not difficult to get officials to appear on film: “The two officials I met were just dying to get their faces in the media,” he says.

One year after the tsunami, US $300 million had been invested in rebuilding the Sri Lankan coastline and yet Ravi and his neighbours were still living in their ‘temporary’ tent villages. The absurdity of the situation hit Dhawan. He notes: “Eighty metres back from these luxury hotels are refugee camps”.

Absurdity aside, the film’s humanity stands out, largely due to the stunning cinematography. Dhawan was astonished to find that amongst the devastation, the slim fishing stilts used by local fisherman for decades had withstood the disaster. Among the film’s most poignant moments are shots of fishermen, pushed back to live in the flats, returning each day to these stilts to fish. “I used to go down there every day and film those stilts,” said Dhawan. You see a man with one disabled arm, climbing a stilt which is 120 years old, which had survived the flood. I can’t tell you how it feels to see these stilts still standing when iron has melted”.

It is Dhawan’s eye for the humanity of his subject that informs the film. While it reveals the injustice and potentially corrupt nature of post-tsunami life, Dhawan also tapped into something more abstract. “There is no absolute representation of a politic in such a large scenario. To me, Ravi, Cyril and Cameron were representative of the human spirit, which I was always chasing through the film.”

Dhruv Dhawan’s attention to the human spirit brings a tragedy of incomprehensible dimensions down to the personal. Filmed from this perspective, and with an awareness of the complexities surrounding an opaque system of governance in a humanitarian crisis, From Dust does not feel like an anti-corruption tirade. It is primarily about human suffering, but avoids explicit outrage at the system that prolongs that suffering.

The system does have problems. The government’s failure to involve survivors in discussions on reconstruction and relocation represents a top-down approach that contradicts best anti-corruption practice. It also violates specific recommendations, such as the need to strengthen access to information regimes, in the 2005 framework for preventing corruption in tsunami aid compiled by Transparency International, the Asian Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

That Dhawan did not focus more on the systemic level can, at times, make the film seem diluted, as though the director did not really pursue his targets. But as a film maker trained in cultural anthropology, he recognises this is not his role. He can show the plight of the survivors, but does not pretend to speak for them. So why he didn’t pursue the corruption angle more strongly? “I have often thought that you could say, ‘ok, revoke the 100 metre rule, let the people live there’. I think that a lot of people would still want to take the option of getting land inland. Ravi does, Cyril does. They all just want to wait [for their land] now. Let’s say my film managed to revoke the hundred metre rule. Great, I’m a major activist. I get my name in the papers, but what happens is these guys have to live there again. And what if another tsunami does hit again one day?”

As not all Sri Lankans are unhappy with their relocation or bothered by how the system operates, Dhawan thinks the solution is clear. Survivors should not be made to pay for their own land, and should have a choice as to whether they are relocated. A simple solution to a complex humanitarian problem.

Dhruv Dhawan was born in Bombay and studied in Dubai and the United States. He freelances as a director and writer in the United Arab Emirates, where he creates work for the emerging commercial sector and broadcast industry in the Middle East. From Dust is his first feature length documentary. It premiered at the Tribecca Film Festival 2005 and has since been screened at the United Nations headquarters and the Dubai International Film Festival, and has been shortlisted for the Hot Docs Film Festival. It opens to festivals in Europe in autumn 2006. To view the trailer or order a copy, log on to www.film-real.com

Have you seen the public service announcement titled “Lets break the chain of corruption” on MTV, Sirasa and Shakthi? It’s the one that starts off with a little girl bringing cigarettes to her father in return for spare change, grows up and gives a bribe to get her son into school, etc. etc. If you have seen it, let us know what you think. PS: The Maharaja Organization aired this PSA FREE OF CHARGE in the public interest and we at the Sri Lanka Anti-Corruption Program are very grateful to them for this.

During the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in Singapore, the new 2006 Worldwide Governance Indicators report (WGI), entitled “Governance Matters V,” was released.  This year’s report consists of data for 213 countries and territories with six aggregate dimensions of governance for the past decade (as well as the many individual data inputs), and can be downloaded by visiting http://www.govindicators.org.

Also during the Annual Meetings in Singapore, on September 18th, 2006, the Development Committee discussed the World Bank’s strategy paper on strengthening its engagement on governance and anti-corruption. Please visit http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/comments/governancefeedback/ to submit feedback on the strategy paper.

A Daily Mirror article published on November 14 alludes to the fact that the SLFP-UNP MoU states nothing on the increasing levels of corruption. Ordinarily this may not have been significant but this omission is grave given that the incidence of corruption seems to be on the rise (there is very little hard data except for perception based data, so the ambiguity is intentional). The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index ranked Sri Lanka at 84–a 6 point drop between 2005 and 2006 (after a 10 point drop between 2004 and 2005), clearly indicating that our progress is in the wrong direction!

While aspects of Good Governance encompass measures aimed at preventing corruption, which is better than prosecuting corruption after the fact—it is thrown about in the vaguest terms. Prevention is preferable, but effective and efficient prosecutorial mechanisms are also essential in maintaining low levels of corruption—prevention and prosecution have to go hand-in-hand. The MoU does talk about Good Governance but doesn’t lay out concretely what “Good” measures, processes or changes to the present system this will entail. But this is stating the obvious—we all know that there is little political will to curb corruption. So how do we as ordinary citizens create political will?

In a blog post recently IROMI suggests that in order to curb corruption we need to start with fighting cynicism first. While I completely agree with Iromi that the masses in Sri Lanka are rather cynical and apathetic, I don’t understand why people don’t work to fix things that go against their own self interests. I am not making a normative statement that people ought to only act in their self interests but making an observation that inaction in the face of challenges to self interest is illogical.

So how do we fight cynicism and how do we create political will? Can creating awareness about how corruption affects each and every person along with awareness raising about things people can do, spur a Movement that will demand of our leaders change in laws, policies and practices that will curb corruption? If there are a few people with integrity that can spearhead a Movement for Integrity will there be sufficient support from the non-cynical to make this Movement achieve a nation of integrity? These are just ideas and questions that I have been grappling with, any comments or suggestions?

An article in today’s Daily Mirror titled “Sign of Insensitive and Senseless Society” which Aljuhara has drawn our attention to is an eye opener about a type of human rights abuse that occurs in our society. This article also points to instances of corruption:

The AHRC also says that items given like sewing machines for occupational therapy are used by staff to run their own small businesses from the ward for instance patch work, quilt making. Meanwhile patients remain unoccupied, and their behaviour is not managed, and then they are subjected to inhuman restrictive practices.

Food that is provided by the family on a day out is taken away by staff. Any meat is confiscated and plain buns are given instead as the staff say that the meat will not agree with the patients. But observers have noticed that the meat is not thrown away but taken away by staff in bags.

Then, soap and basics provided to maintain hygiene are taken away by staff and pieces of inexpensive soap like Sunlight is provided instead which reacts badly with the skin of the patients giving rise to added problems. These things are actually happening within these wards and the information is reported by credible NGO staff, mental health professionals and support persons.

While most of us think about corruption as a thing that involves politicians, we also think that it does not affect our lives directly. It doesn’t matter as much if someone gets rich of some multi-million dollar foreign funded project. But the article above brings home the fact that corruption and the abuse of human rights are first cousins–one doesn’t cause the other, but they are able to co-exist in a mutually beneficial manner.

Both are ills that have to be challenged.