The term 'yahapalanaya' (good governance) is something that many of the yahapalanites hadn't heard of a mere 18 months ago. It's something that it's staunchest advocates don't seem to understand. The confusion is understandable. It can be described in a simple equation: yaha-paalanya = ape-paalanaya (good governance = our governance). Anyway, five years ago, I wrote in the Daily News, about issues that Mahinda Rajapaksa could ill-afford to ignore. He did. The issues didn't leave with him. They have been lovingly embraced by his successors. The writing, then, is on the walls, one might say.
T.M.S. Saldin was a medium pacer who never made it to the
Sri Lankan cricket team. He played in
the late seventies and early eighties for the SSC. Few would remember him
today. I remember him mostly as the man
who led Royal College the year that Ranjan Madugalle saved Royal from what
seemed certain defeat at the Big Match with a fighting knock of 71, ably
supported by Ashok Jayawickrema, whose contribution to the match-saving stand
was 36 not out.
Sulaiman Saldin was a scraggly boy when he first played for
Royal, I think in 1972. He was a medium
pacer. In 1976, the year he captained
the team, he would stride out at the fall of the second wicket and was
considered a frontline batsman and one who had acquired quite a bit of
warrior-weight since his debut. That’s
how it goes, and not just in school cricket.
Sanath Jayasuriya did not start his international cricket
career as an opener. Neither did Romesh
Kaluwitharana or Roshan Mahanama. Daniel
Vettori, the New Zealand
captain was not selected as a batsman when he first made it to the team but has
been so consistent with the bat that it would be hard to decide whether he is a
batting or bowling allrounder. Two years
ago if anyone floated the idea of playing Tillakeratne Dilshan as opener (in
any form of the game) it would have raised quite a few eyebrows. He has now cemented his place as opener.
Selectors are not gods. They have to go by track record,
requirements of the team, composition of the opposition and nature of the task
at hand. It takes time to figure out
what position fits a player best at a given moment.
In an ideal world ‘transfers’ and ‘promotions’ should be
like that; a matter of figuring who is best for which job and where at a given
moment in time, the last condition being very important because tasks and
approaches change with time as do the skill levels, work ethic and enthusiasm
of the particular employee. In an ideal
world, then, a term like ‘punishment transfer’ would have no meaning.
If there is skill, commitment and integrity, if there is a
public service where merit is rewarded and overall efficiency requirements are
of paramount concern and if there are no regional hierarchies or ‘more
attractive’ institutions, then transfer as punishment would not be an
option. The reality, unfortunately, is
that we don’t live in an idea world. We
live in a society of multiple hierarchies, poor ethics and a tendency for
personal affairs to (dis)colour public good.
‘Punishment’ is not consequent to wrongdoing but a sanitized term for
‘revenge’ and transfers (over and above this) but a matter to facilitate the
continuation of wrongdoing. I know that
there are all kinds of allegations about cricket team selections, but just
imagine for a moment what would happen if ‘requirements’ such as those
described above in the matter of transfers were referred to in picking the
batting order. The possibilities are
limitless, but you could, theoretically, have Murali opening the batting, Sanga
taking the new ball and Dilhara keeping wickets and a few matches later, all
three relegated to the ‘A’ team for under-performing. It is a short distance from there to
oblivion.
My father, the last member of the Ceylon Civil Service at
the time he retired, was frequently ‘punishment-transferred’; each time
governments changed, the newly elected would remember that he was a Trotskyite
while an undergraduate. He spent quite a lot of time in the ‘pool’ and was
shunted from one obscure department to another throughout his career. To his credit, these movements did not cause
any diminishing of enthusiasm or work ethic, which meant of course that there
was no increase in father-time for us kids.
He ought to have retired a bitter man. He didn’t. Maybe he belonged to a
different generation of Mandarins.
My concern with transfers, transferability and the politics
of punishment was piqued this morning by a news story in ‘The Island’ shoved
under a section titled ‘Police Scene’.
It was about a policeman, yes, but it is an issue that spilled out of
the Police Department. A police officer who arrested a woman for possessing
heroin was reported to have been transferred because the said woman was a
friend of a powerful Provincial Councillor.
The police officer, Sub Inspector Amarasena, was duly transferred from
Grand Pass Police Station to the Harbour Police. Is that a consequence of searching for ‘better
fit’ as should be the case in an ideal world?
It can’t be ‘punishment’ for there can’t be any wrongdoing in arresting
a drug dealer, unless right and wrong have exchanged places and we are all
standing on our heads. Is an errant
Provincial Councellor more powerful than the IGP?
Just imagine if this was how things usually are across the
board, i.e. in schools, the police, security forces and all government
departments and institutions. If every
person endowed with any kind of authority and power were to engage in moving
people around this way to ‘punish’ (far more ‘civilized’ than the word
‘revenge’ don’t you agree?), then we would not have a society seeking better
‘fit’ but one that is in constant turmoil.
Just picture a society where buildings have their doors
opened and ‘work’ is nothing more nothing less than a matter of signing
transfer papers and people moving out and moving in (as the case may be). Imagine you are looking at it from above and
it was all happening in high-speed. We
would see a revolving-door kind of operation, wouldn’t we?
Folks, that is where we are heading. Institutions are fast becoming mere building
housing fly-by-nights; not by choice but due to transferability and
transferring of the guilt(y). This is
what happens when every little rat with a tiny bit of power believes he/she has
executive sweep.
There are two unnamed things present in this discussion by
their conspicuous absence. President Mahinda Rajapaksa needs them or, if they
are not to his liking, he needs to find alternatives. For now, let me just name them, because as a
citizen I don’t want to walk into any state institution and be mowed down by
someone storming out or crushed in the comings and goings of the transferred-in
and the transferred-out. It is not a
cricket team situation and we are not talking about Sulaiman Saldin or Tillakeratne
Dilshan. We are talking about two
institutions: the Public Service Commision and the Police Commission.
Malinda Seneviratne is
a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com
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