Running out of diplomats and out of excuses

During the 2024 budget debate which thankfully concluded earlier this month there was much bombast and belligerence which fortunately stopped short of fisticuffs, though the corridors were not entirely free of major power clashes.

That led to three MPs being timed out like former Sri Lanka cricket captain Angelo Mathews in his international record-breaking incident not too long ago. But the cricketing metaphor is not without relevance.

For there was this interesting sub-plot to this year’s debate which added some fiery “miris kudu” into what turned out to be an argumentative exchange as liberally flavoured as dishwater.

It is not that our feisty parliamentary politics is not accustomed to liberal doses of chilli and other spices in the devilish dishes our legendary politicians churn out now and then in the chamber.

But nothing has been such an entertaining spectator sport that suddenly awakened even global interest than turning the country’s much-loved cricket into a blood sport as the one between the Representatives of the People and Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC).

Whether the SLC’s anguished cry for the help of the International Cricket Council (ICC) violated our sovereignty as the UN Office of the Human Rights Commissioner is said to have done, we must await a learned verdict from Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Sabry PC.

Well, that can wait as there is another matter that one would like to speak to Ali Sabry PC about. No. no, not about a colleague, Public Security Minister Tiran Alles’s enthusiasm to wipe out the whole underworld as one-time Philippine President Duterte was wont to do with his “bang, bang, you’re dead” philosophical approach to instant justice which is surely not what Minister Alles calls “yukthiya”.

Anybody who still has doubts about such an unfair comparison could well ask his field commander IGP (acting) Deshabandu Tennekoon who, some claim, is not only determined to vacuum-clean this deshaya but others too, if he is still around.

Besides slanging matches with the opposition that reached very high decibel levels, Foreign Minister Ali Sabry seemed to lament that he is forced to go into diplomatic battle with badly or untrained troops and even worse armour.

Unlike Field Marshal Montgomery who would stay away from battle during the El Alamein war against Hitler’s celebrated Field Marshal Rommel’s Africa Corps, unless he could overawe the German desert commander with overwhelming numbers of men and air support, poor Mr Ali Sabry PC, seemed more like the officer who led the British Light Brigade in the battle of Balaclava.

During the budget debate, the foreign minister was providing a statistical breakdown of his troops stationed in Republic Square as muchneeded reserves and others manning the frontlines across the world.

Later in a media interview, asked about the shortage of diplomatic fighting forces, the foreign minister said:

“That is a huge problem as I told in Parliament. We have an approved cadre of 264 members of the Sri Lanka Foreign Service. This is in addition to the supportive staff. We have only 168 diplomatic officers to man 55 missions abroad as well 24 divisions in the Ministry. This is not easy. We have sought permission to recruit the next batch. We are in the final stage. We hope to recruit 25 diplomatic officers.

“In the meantime, I will seek Cabinet approval to restart some of the missions we closed, like Cyprus and Frankfurt in Germany. Also, we want to restart our embassy in Iraq where there is a huge market for our tea. Besides, we are going to open a new mission in New Zealand.”

All that is very touching Mr Minister, especially reopening missions when you are badly shortstaffed as you say. It certainly brings tears to one’s eyes. But has he stopped a minute or two to ponder why the diplomatic staffing is quite a mess?

Let me have a shot at it. Dear Foreign Minister while you labour along in parliament representing an electorate that did not vote for you because you did not contest an election and still boldly talk of serving the people of this Resplendent Isle, have you looked around the chamber or particularly when you meet in a Socratic enclave in cabinet?

No? Well, I can quite understand why. I would close my eyes and block my ears and not see or hear some of the goings on. One can quite understand why some of your colleagues you share a pew with, have a habit of taking a lot of what is said through one ear and letting it out of the other ear.

Reading all the rubbish that emanates from there and piles up in the Hansard is bad enough but imagine having to listen to it.

But some of your colleagues seem to do take it through one ear and let it go from the other is not because of the content but—as some cynics say—because there is little between the two ears to block the escape.

Still never mind that. If you happen to take your Foreign Ministry staff list to the chamber, look around and check the list, you might notice there are several who have their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, sisters and others with your genes and even jeans or some blood running through their veins, manning the diplomatic battlements in some capital or outpost with diplomatic passport in hand.

Just ask your cabinet colleague Media and Trade Minister Bandula Gunawardena if he has anybody— or any bodies—he knows scattered across the world from New York via Europe to Canberra.

The real reason why government’s refrain from recruiting staff through examinations despite all those pledges—mostly hollow—about meritocracy, is because filling positions from top to bottom with career staff prevents political leaders, ministers, MPs and their cronies, from being squeezed into diplomatic postings, particularly those who do not have the basic qualifications for the job.

Or Minister Ali Sabry might tap a few others in or outside parliament these days and pose the same question. He might well discover that there are reasons which would answer his question about career officer shortage.

The first is that this country has been burdened with governments that have an aversion to hold regular examinations to recruit budding diplomats. If my memory serves me correct, the last recruitment was in 2018.

The real reason why government’s refrain from recruiting staff through examinations despite all those pledges—mostly hollow—about meritocracy, is because filling positions from top to bottom with career staff prevents political leaders, ministers, MPs and their cronies, from being squeezed into diplomatic postings, particularly those who do not have the basic qualifications for the job.

My journalist colleague Namini Wijedasa who has a predilection to count diplomatic and non-diplomatic heads once every few years just to see that neither Sri Lanka nor the world has forgotten we have something called a foreign policy and to see who is selling it around the globe, does come up with interesting statistics.

Just to give a taste of her diplomatic chop suey, writing in May 2020 to this paper she found 27 of our missions— then almost half of them—had political appointees as high commissioners, ambassadors, consuls general and deputy high commissioners.

Lack of space prevents me from further exploring this subject because the career service itself is not without fault seeing the throat-cutting, the political salivating and kowtowing that goes on. So one must await another occasion.

But I cannot end this without a comment on the foreign minister on the Sri Lankan diaspora abroad. He was quoted in the media as saying that the country’s largest community is the 340,00 in the UAE. He sure seemed to have slipped up, forgetting that there appears to be around 700,000 in the UK.