By R. Wijewardene
logo-onthedocBattle lines have now been drawn, and the daggers are evidently out. In just six weeks, two gladiators of contemporary Sri Lankan polity will face each other in what promises to be an epic political battle.
The limited time frame available for campaigning has heightened the inevitable high drama of a Sri Lankan election. Just days after the date for this contest was finally announced both sides are already brandishing their weapons – chief amongst them corruption.
In this bitter battle for popularity corruption is Sarath Fonseka’s main weapon against the Rajapaksa juggernaut. Nothing has alienated this country’s population more than the present administration’s wanton misuse of pubic funds and the extent of the nepotism cultivated and indulged at every level by this nation’s political leadership.
As a military man free of the baggage of a political career Fonseka’s image as a clean candidate is a key part of his platform. However the Rajapaksas’ notoriously effective propaganda machine has hit back and the suggestion that Fonseka isn’t quite as clean as he is made out to be is now flying around the internet. But for all their attempts to sully the General’s reputation, in this case, the Rajapaksas may be fighting a losing battle.
Through their own efforts they have secured a place in the popular imagination as the most corrupt administration in this nation’s history. And this week The Sunday Leader has compiled a list, by no means comprehensive, of cases of government corruption, highlighted by this newspaper alone over the last four years of Rajapaksa rule;
While the allegations in every case are extremely serious, with billions of rupees misspent, ultimately no action has been taken regarding any of the following instances of massive corruption.
And that indifference to corruption — the administration’s utter complacency and its belief that war victories would allow it to remain popular regardless of the massive theft being committed at every level of government, is largely responsible for the Rajapaksas’ current predicament.
Mihin Air
lankaThis bizarre project to create a national budget airline — named after the President has become a byword for massive waste. The sums spent on this misguided venture have been simply catastrophic. The airline lost over Rs. 3 billion between 2007 and 2008.
And after being unable to continue to finance the lease of its aircraft after just a year of operation Mihin Air stopped flights in April 2008.
But even that debacle wasn’t enough to put a stop to the flying farce, and the 2008 budget allocated a tranche of over Rs. 500 million to allow Mihin to resume operations.
Millions of rupees to salvage a prestige project but while the airline may bear the name of the President the massive expenditure is being borne by the public.
Worse, while billions have been wasted on Mihin Air the national airline SriLankan has been abandoned to crass mismanagement.
SriLankan
sri-lankan-airlines-logoSriLankan Airlines’ CEO, Peter Hill’s failure to accommodate the President’s enormous retinue on a flight led the government to terminate Emirates’ management contract with the airline.
The re-nationalisation of the airline however has been a disaster and a once profitable privately run airline is now registering losses that rival those of any government corporation.
The once self-reliant SriLankan has become a drain on public finances and with Rs. 10 billion worth of losses, last year’s Treasury funds must now be used to keep the airline afloat. Once gain therefore the public finds itself bearing the cost for the government’s egoism.
Airports
weerawila_airportSri Lanka now finds itself in the unique position of having more foundation stones for airports than functioning airports.
The reasonably sensible Wellawaya airport project initiated by the previous government was abandoned by this government in favour of the Weerawila airport.
But Weerawila was from the outset an utterly unsuitable location, given its proximity to nearby wildlife sanctuaries and its distance from major cities. Eventually the project was shelved though millions were spent on the groundwork and on clearing and fencing the site.
Hambantota has now been identified as the site for the much needed second airport. But apart from proximity to the President’s fife why a sparsely populated town in the deep south needs an international airport remains an open question.
MiG Deal
MigAirlines and aviation appear to be a real specialty for this administration. However the infamous MiG Deal ultimately raises the broader issue of defence purchases. War is a profitable business and massive increases in defence expenditure have created more scope for corruption.
All defence purchases are channelled through Lanka Logistics, a company controlled by the government. Lanka Logistics and Technologies coordinates all the military’s defence purchases worth thousands of billions of rupees, but the company has not published accounts since its inception. And this absolute lack of transparency and the nexus between arms purchases, the state, and the ruling family virtually guarantees allegations of corruption.
However the government is so insecure regarding the various allegations of corruption levelled against it that it has simply moved to censor reporting on defence purchases.
But these attempts at suppression have been taken by the public as a virtual admission of guilt, and news regarding various crooked deals have been replaced by a steady stream of rumours.
Rumours have made a large portion of the public believe that those at the upper echelons of the government did indeed profit from the war.
An allegation with potentially catastrophic consequences for Rajapaksa’s chances of re-election.
Oil hedging
OilWhile aviation is clearly a government specialty, corruption is now a diversified industry and in 2007/2008 the administration moved in to oil.
Extraordinarily the fact that the country, despite various grand claims and promises, is yet to strike oil hasn’t prevented the administration from profiting from black gold.
In 2008, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) purchased oil futures contracts for the supply of oil at $135 a barrel only to find that the price of oil would plunge to less than $ 40 in early 2009.
The CPC however was locked into buying fuel at almost three times the market rate and the losses from the deal threatened to reach one billion dollars.
Corruption and perks awarded to the CPC Chairman among others are said to have been behind the skewed deal, but ultimate responsibility must lie with the President who in his capacity as Finance Minister should have been aware of the specifics of any agreement. While the deal was abrogated in late 2008 it is likely the government — i.e. tax payers of this country — will have to fork out millions of dollars worth of compensation to Citibank and Standard Chartered for prematurely terminating the deal — again, billions of rupees of extra public expenditure as a result of government indifference, incompetence and greed.
Maga Neguma
ddThe state owned entity for road development functions like a private company.
Headed by a close associate of the Rajapaksas’, Jaliya Kulasekera, billions of rupees worth of contracts for road development have been channelled to Maga Neguma.
However many of the projects are said to be overvalued. And the entity’s record for completing road works remains patchy. Maga Neguma vehicles are more often seen carrying government propaganda than actually building roads.
The Southern Expressway
xxThe government’s showpiece, touted as the nation’s most ambitious and vital infrastructure project is in tatters. Years behind schedule and massively over budget, the Southern Expressway is now synonymous with extravagance, mismanagement and excesses.
While a 300 million dollar ADB loan was provided for the purpose of constructing the highway, the government, more for reasons of prestige than necessity expanded the scheme from a two lane to a four lane project resulting in serious financial shortfalls, with the government claiming in 2008 that another 100 million dollars worth of financing would be required to fund the construction of the final phase of the project.
Originally scheduled to be completed in 2010 it may be another five years before any vehicles actually make the journey from Colombo to Matara in the promised two hours.
And a series of poorly constructed and collapsing bridges along the length of the highway will only further delay the project as these unsafe bridges will have to be reconstructed at massive expense.
Katunayake Expressway
katuHighways to nowhere appear to be another government speciality and while the Katunayake initiative is decades old this government has not lost the opportunity to profit from it. Reviving the stalled programme a Rs.10 billion contract was awarded to MCC — a Chinese company with limited expertise in road building rather than a better qualified French company. Again the fact that the local representative for the Chinese company was connected to the ruling family likely played a part in that erudite decision.
Hambantota
hambaWhile wild elephants are rapidly becoming an endangered species in Sri Lanka the government is doing its best to increase the country’s population of white elephants.
While part of the Hambantota project — the port — seems a sensible enough government scheme to move the country’s capital to an area that lacks population and water resources is potentially a massively corrupt disaster.
Vast tracts of land have been marked out for IT parks and industrial zones but who will work in these still unbuilt factories and outsourcing centers miles from any source of skilled labour remains to be seen.
While the financing for the government’s grandiose Hambantota schemes come from China, on what basis the tenders for the construction of the facilities at the port site were granted remains unclear.
And plans for a Safari Park at Hambantota now suggest the administration is ready to indulge in dictatorial levels of extravagance and waste — spending its limited financial resources on wild life parks with lions and rhinos when genuine sanctuaries can be found just minutes from Hambantota. The projected cost of the Safari Park is a staggering Rs.1.6 billion.
Kerawalapitiya
KerawalapitiyaThe combined fuel cycle plant built to ease the country’s dire electricity shortage is yet another of the government’s white elephants. The government paid $400 million for a plant thought to be worth approximately half that figure.
And the plant in fact generates only 200 megawatts of power rather than the 300 originally specified. Worse, the electricity that is generated by the plant is extremely expensive and is being sold by the CEB at a significant loss. So the upshot of the Kerawalapitiya plant has been to push a loss making state enterprise further into debt.
Uma Oya Scheme
umaThe Uma Oya Scheme is another white elephant. The government has allocated more than $400 million for the construction of dams across the already extensively tapped Uma Oya. The original estimate for the cost of the project was $160 million and environmental impact reports have been circumvented to allow the unviable scheme to proceed. Again the government’s decisions to grant overvalued contracts for the construction of unnecessary projects only raises the spectre of corruption.
Deniyaya Palace
demouaBuilt by the clan for the clan, the sprawling edifice hidden in the backwaters of Deniyaya came for many to symbolise the absolute excess, and extravagance of the regime. And whatever suspicions the people had regarding corruption at the site were only confirmed when the government moved to arrest the reporters who originally revealed the location of the not quite presidential palace.
Oh and lets not forget…
Golden Key
xzWhile Golden Key may seem like an instance of personal greed on the part of Lalith Kotelawala, the Central Bank’s deliberately lax regulations and its tolerance of unauthorised finance companies and general financial fraud created the conditions that allowed Kotelawala to engineer Sri Lanka’s largest financial sandal. The fact that Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal actively suppressed investigation into reported malpractices at Golden Key adds to the government’s culpability and as Cabraal is himself a political appointee the ultimate responsibility rests with those who appointed him (no prizes for guessing who that was).
Tip of the iceberg
The corruption implicit in the above mentioned mega projects is itself a damning indictment on the present administration. But the reality is that even these huge frauds and the enormous losses suffered by the people of Sri Lanka as a result of the loss making Mihin Air or the catastrophic oil hedging deal for example represent only the tip of the government’s iceberg of criminality.
The vast majority of corruption takes place not in mega projects but in a myriad of petty frauds and thefts committed by over 100 ministers and hundreds of MPs and provincial council members.
A simple example is the gross fraud committed at the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, an agency that falls under the purview of Minister Keheliya Rambukwella’s Ministry. In that instance insurance was made compulsory for Sri Lankan domestic workers, and those looking to secure employment in Kuwait had to purchase insurance though a single authorised agent. This agent however was an unregistered company selling over-valued insurance and operating from inside the Sri Lankan Embassy in Kuwait.
Over Rs.100 million worth of fraudulent insurance was purchased by unwitting maids and the idea that the government appears to have resorted to thieving from the maids who toil in the Middle East is an indication of the depth of the greed and indifference that run through the regime.
And of course the sheer extent of the corruption now prevalent in every arm of the government is such that no list can be remotely comprehensive. But even this brief sample serves as an indication as to why an unknown maverick – Sarath Fonseka — stands a chance of defeating a man who just months ago was perhaps the most popular leader in Sri Lanka’s history.
And of course corruption isn’t the only trick up Fonseka’s ex military sleeve. Nepotism with Rajapaksa relatives and allies stuffed into every conceivable position, and the absolute brutality of the police — the despicable deaths in custody at Angulana or the use of policemen in the beating of the hapless Sivakumaran at Bambalapitiya will be potent ammunition for the General.
Fonseka in fact has a formidable arsenal of weapons at his disposal, including his status as a war hero and ironically most if not all these weapons were given to him by the Rajapaksas through their own short sightedness, venality and greed.
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2009/11/29/the-ultimate-swindlers-list/
logo-onthedocBattle lines have now been drawn, and the daggers are evidently out. In just six weeks, two gladiators of contemporary Sri Lankan polity will face each other in what promises to be an epic political battle.
The limited time frame available for campaigning has heightened the inevitable high drama of a Sri Lankan election. Just days after the date for this contest was finally announced both sides are already brandishing their weapons – chief amongst them corruption.
In this bitter battle for popularity corruption is Sarath Fonseka’s main weapon against the Rajapaksa juggernaut. Nothing has alienated this country’s population more than the present administration’s wanton misuse of pubic funds and the extent of the nepotism cultivated and indulged at every level by this nation’s political leadership.
As a military man free of the baggage of a political career Fonseka’s image as a clean candidate is a key part of his platform. However the Rajapaksas’ notoriously effective propaganda machine has hit back and the suggestion that Fonseka isn’t quite as clean as he is made out to be is now flying around the internet. But for all their attempts to sully the General’s reputation, in this case, the Rajapaksas may be fighting a losing battle.
Through their own efforts they have secured a place in the popular imagination as the most corrupt administration in this nation’s history. And this week The Sunday Leader has compiled a list, by no means comprehensive, of cases of government corruption, highlighted by this newspaper alone over the last four years of Rajapaksa rule;
While the allegations in every case are extremely serious, with billions of rupees misspent, ultimately no action has been taken regarding any of the following instances of massive corruption.
And that indifference to corruption — the administration’s utter complacency and its belief that war victories would allow it to remain popular regardless of the massive theft being committed at every level of government, is largely responsible for the Rajapaksas’ current predicament.
Mihin Air
lankaThis bizarre project to create a national budget airline — named after the President has become a byword for massive waste. The sums spent on this misguided venture have been simply catastrophic. The airline lost over Rs. 3 billion between 2007 and 2008.
And after being unable to continue to finance the lease of its aircraft after just a year of operation Mihin Air stopped flights in April 2008.
But even that debacle wasn’t enough to put a stop to the flying farce, and the 2008 budget allocated a tranche of over Rs. 500 million to allow Mihin to resume operations.
Millions of rupees to salvage a prestige project but while the airline may bear the name of the President the massive expenditure is being borne by the public.
Worse, while billions have been wasted on Mihin Air the national airline SriLankan has been abandoned to crass mismanagement.
SriLankan
sri-lankan-airlines-logoSriLankan Airlines’ CEO, Peter Hill’s failure to accommodate the President’s enormous retinue on a flight led the government to terminate Emirates’ management contract with the airline.
The re-nationalisation of the airline however has been a disaster and a once profitable privately run airline is now registering losses that rival those of any government corporation.
The once self-reliant SriLankan has become a drain on public finances and with Rs. 10 billion worth of losses, last year’s Treasury funds must now be used to keep the airline afloat. Once gain therefore the public finds itself bearing the cost for the government’s egoism.
Airports
weerawila_airportSri Lanka now finds itself in the unique position of having more foundation stones for airports than functioning airports.
The reasonably sensible Wellawaya airport project initiated by the previous government was abandoned by this government in favour of the Weerawila airport.
But Weerawila was from the outset an utterly unsuitable location, given its proximity to nearby wildlife sanctuaries and its distance from major cities. Eventually the project was shelved though millions were spent on the groundwork and on clearing and fencing the site.
Hambantota has now been identified as the site for the much needed second airport. But apart from proximity to the President’s fife why a sparsely populated town in the deep south needs an international airport remains an open question.
MiG Deal
MigAirlines and aviation appear to be a real specialty for this administration. However the infamous MiG Deal ultimately raises the broader issue of defence purchases. War is a profitable business and massive increases in defence expenditure have created more scope for corruption.
All defence purchases are channelled through Lanka Logistics, a company controlled by the government. Lanka Logistics and Technologies coordinates all the military’s defence purchases worth thousands of billions of rupees, but the company has not published accounts since its inception. And this absolute lack of transparency and the nexus between arms purchases, the state, and the ruling family virtually guarantees allegations of corruption.
However the government is so insecure regarding the various allegations of corruption levelled against it that it has simply moved to censor reporting on defence purchases.
But these attempts at suppression have been taken by the public as a virtual admission of guilt, and news regarding various crooked deals have been replaced by a steady stream of rumours.
Rumours have made a large portion of the public believe that those at the upper echelons of the government did indeed profit from the war.
An allegation with potentially catastrophic consequences for Rajapaksa’s chances of re-election.
Oil hedging
OilWhile aviation is clearly a government specialty, corruption is now a diversified industry and in 2007/2008 the administration moved in to oil.
Extraordinarily the fact that the country, despite various grand claims and promises, is yet to strike oil hasn’t prevented the administration from profiting from black gold.
In 2008, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) purchased oil futures contracts for the supply of oil at $135 a barrel only to find that the price of oil would plunge to less than $ 40 in early 2009.
The CPC however was locked into buying fuel at almost three times the market rate and the losses from the deal threatened to reach one billion dollars.
Corruption and perks awarded to the CPC Chairman among others are said to have been behind the skewed deal, but ultimate responsibility must lie with the President who in his capacity as Finance Minister should have been aware of the specifics of any agreement. While the deal was abrogated in late 2008 it is likely the government — i.e. tax payers of this country — will have to fork out millions of dollars worth of compensation to Citibank and Standard Chartered for prematurely terminating the deal — again, billions of rupees of extra public expenditure as a result of government indifference, incompetence and greed.
Maga Neguma
ddThe state owned entity for road development functions like a private company.
Headed by a close associate of the Rajapaksas’, Jaliya Kulasekera, billions of rupees worth of contracts for road development have been channelled to Maga Neguma.
However many of the projects are said to be overvalued. And the entity’s record for completing road works remains patchy. Maga Neguma vehicles are more often seen carrying government propaganda than actually building roads.
The Southern Expressway
xxThe government’s showpiece, touted as the nation’s most ambitious and vital infrastructure project is in tatters. Years behind schedule and massively over budget, the Southern Expressway is now synonymous with extravagance, mismanagement and excesses.
While a 300 million dollar ADB loan was provided for the purpose of constructing the highway, the government, more for reasons of prestige than necessity expanded the scheme from a two lane to a four lane project resulting in serious financial shortfalls, with the government claiming in 2008 that another 100 million dollars worth of financing would be required to fund the construction of the final phase of the project.
Originally scheduled to be completed in 2010 it may be another five years before any vehicles actually make the journey from Colombo to Matara in the promised two hours.
And a series of poorly constructed and collapsing bridges along the length of the highway will only further delay the project as these unsafe bridges will have to be reconstructed at massive expense.
Katunayake Expressway
katuHighways to nowhere appear to be another government speciality and while the Katunayake initiative is decades old this government has not lost the opportunity to profit from it. Reviving the stalled programme a Rs.10 billion contract was awarded to MCC — a Chinese company with limited expertise in road building rather than a better qualified French company. Again the fact that the local representative for the Chinese company was connected to the ruling family likely played a part in that erudite decision.
Hambantota
hambaWhile wild elephants are rapidly becoming an endangered species in Sri Lanka the government is doing its best to increase the country’s population of white elephants.
While part of the Hambantota project — the port — seems a sensible enough government scheme to move the country’s capital to an area that lacks population and water resources is potentially a massively corrupt disaster.
Vast tracts of land have been marked out for IT parks and industrial zones but who will work in these still unbuilt factories and outsourcing centers miles from any source of skilled labour remains to be seen.
While the financing for the government’s grandiose Hambantota schemes come from China, on what basis the tenders for the construction of the facilities at the port site were granted remains unclear.
And plans for a Safari Park at Hambantota now suggest the administration is ready to indulge in dictatorial levels of extravagance and waste — spending its limited financial resources on wild life parks with lions and rhinos when genuine sanctuaries can be found just minutes from Hambantota. The projected cost of the Safari Park is a staggering Rs.1.6 billion.
Kerawalapitiya
KerawalapitiyaThe combined fuel cycle plant built to ease the country’s dire electricity shortage is yet another of the government’s white elephants. The government paid $400 million for a plant thought to be worth approximately half that figure.
And the plant in fact generates only 200 megawatts of power rather than the 300 originally specified. Worse, the electricity that is generated by the plant is extremely expensive and is being sold by the CEB at a significant loss. So the upshot of the Kerawalapitiya plant has been to push a loss making state enterprise further into debt.
Uma Oya Scheme
umaThe Uma Oya Scheme is another white elephant. The government has allocated more than $400 million for the construction of dams across the already extensively tapped Uma Oya. The original estimate for the cost of the project was $160 million and environmental impact reports have been circumvented to allow the unviable scheme to proceed. Again the government’s decisions to grant overvalued contracts for the construction of unnecessary projects only raises the spectre of corruption.
Deniyaya Palace
demouaBuilt by the clan for the clan, the sprawling edifice hidden in the backwaters of Deniyaya came for many to symbolise the absolute excess, and extravagance of the regime. And whatever suspicions the people had regarding corruption at the site were only confirmed when the government moved to arrest the reporters who originally revealed the location of the not quite presidential palace.
Oh and lets not forget…
Golden Key
xzWhile Golden Key may seem like an instance of personal greed on the part of Lalith Kotelawala, the Central Bank’s deliberately lax regulations and its tolerance of unauthorised finance companies and general financial fraud created the conditions that allowed Kotelawala to engineer Sri Lanka’s largest financial sandal. The fact that Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal actively suppressed investigation into reported malpractices at Golden Key adds to the government’s culpability and as Cabraal is himself a political appointee the ultimate responsibility rests with those who appointed him (no prizes for guessing who that was).
Tip of the iceberg
The corruption implicit in the above mentioned mega projects is itself a damning indictment on the present administration. But the reality is that even these huge frauds and the enormous losses suffered by the people of Sri Lanka as a result of the loss making Mihin Air or the catastrophic oil hedging deal for example represent only the tip of the government’s iceberg of criminality.
The vast majority of corruption takes place not in mega projects but in a myriad of petty frauds and thefts committed by over 100 ministers and hundreds of MPs and provincial council members.
A simple example is the gross fraud committed at the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment, an agency that falls under the purview of Minister Keheliya Rambukwella’s Ministry. In that instance insurance was made compulsory for Sri Lankan domestic workers, and those looking to secure employment in Kuwait had to purchase insurance though a single authorised agent. This agent however was an unregistered company selling over-valued insurance and operating from inside the Sri Lankan Embassy in Kuwait.
Over Rs.100 million worth of fraudulent insurance was purchased by unwitting maids and the idea that the government appears to have resorted to thieving from the maids who toil in the Middle East is an indication of the depth of the greed and indifference that run through the regime.
And of course the sheer extent of the corruption now prevalent in every arm of the government is such that no list can be remotely comprehensive. But even this brief sample serves as an indication as to why an unknown maverick – Sarath Fonseka — stands a chance of defeating a man who just months ago was perhaps the most popular leader in Sri Lanka’s history.
And of course corruption isn’t the only trick up Fonseka’s ex military sleeve. Nepotism with Rajapaksa relatives and allies stuffed into every conceivable position, and the absolute brutality of the police — the despicable deaths in custody at Angulana or the use of policemen in the beating of the hapless Sivakumaran at Bambalapitiya will be potent ammunition for the General.
Fonseka in fact has a formidable arsenal of weapons at his disposal, including his status as a war hero and ironically most if not all these weapons were given to him by the Rajapaksas through their own short sightedness, venality and greed.
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2009/11/29/the-ultimate-swindlers-list/
