And, another probe on the national airline

The national airline, SriLankan has been brought down to terra firma from its otherwise dark and cloudy skies scrutinised as it were this week by a Parliamentary oversight committee. COPE – the Committee on Public Enterprises, which made a not-so-startling announcement in the process that the carrier is losing Rs. 84 million a day by its very existence.

This ought not to surprise anyone, certainly not the country's Parliamentarians and financial supervisors. And these COPE deliberations are certainly not the first, almost surely not the last scrutiny into its finances. Not long ago, a prospective foreign partner who came to study its accounts ran off saying the airline badly needed a "haircut" - in economic parlance, massive restructuring.

Only two years ago to this month (July 2019), a Presidential Commission of Inquiry probed deep into the airline's affairs. It submitted its findings -- and its recommendations -- to then President Maithripala Sirisena only to have the report kicked into the long grass because the findings were heavily critical of those VIPs with whom he was currying favour for his own personal political survival.

These very VIPs are now back in the saddle and apart from asking the airline's board to provide a 'business plan' within a month (one would have thought the Chairman would have had one to submit straightaway), will the committee act on the PCoI findings and recommendations?

The airline and its one-time subsidiary, Mihin Lanka, had 'sacred cow' status and were run with pathetically symptomatic lack of financial discipline and managerial skills by successive Governments. Most directorates were packed with party stooges and relatives, most with no clue of how the airline industry is run.

The way the VIPs of the time ended the airline's partnership with one of the world's topmost airlines, Emirates, over an incident involving the free booting entourage of the then President was a classic instance of how a national airline should not be managed. The PCoI displaying a sense of utter despondency said in its report that only "karmic consequences" will flow to the culprits.

The sitting Chairman of the airline tried to defend the high salaries paid to some of its senior management. The committee's line of questioning seems to ask if these salaries were justified for an institution that is draining the public purse.

The airline continues to run on political whims and fancies. Take the recent announcement of starting flights to Moscow. Nobody needs to second guess where that directive comes from.

The binge spenders of yesteryear, including those who made their fortune on procurements are facing corruption charges in the United Kingdom, not Sri Lanka. To expect any positive outcome even from these new investigations is to expect pigs to fly.