MORE PORTFOLIOS; A REWARD FOR PROTECTING GOVT. DURING CRISIS?
Two more non-cabinet ministers and a deputy minister were sworn in on Friday bringing the number of non-cabinet ministers to five. Earlier, in the wake of Ranil Wickremesinghe being reappointed Prime Minister last month, three non-cabinet ministers had been appointed.
The new appointments must be a response to the grumbling by many ruling party MPS who had been sidelined when the UNF government was re-instituted last month due to the 30-member limit imposed on the Cabinet by the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Also there are new ministerial aspirants among the backbenchers of the ruling party as well. These grumbles have been contending that they were unable to serve the people without ministerial portfolios and had taken great pains in protecting the government during the recent political and Constitutional crises.
It is vividly clear that the portfolios of newly-introduced non-cabinet ministers are a ploy by the government to increase the number of ministers at the expense of the tax-payers, as President Ranasinghe Premadasa introduced the posts of State Ministers. Earlier, the government was attempting to increase the number of Cabinet ministers by at least two, arguing that the 30-member Cabinet specified by the 19th Amendment did not include the President and the Prime Minister.
During the tenure of President J.R. Jayawardene, among the nearly one hundred Cabinet and non-cabinet ministers, there was only one State Minister, a Cabinet minister who in fact held the media portfolio. The post was then held by Dr. Anandatissa de Alwis. However, during his tenure President Premadasa introduced a number of State Ministers who were not Cabinet ministers.
Before that the country knew only about Cabinet ministers and deputy ministers and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) MPS who were then on the Opposition benches of the Parliament questioned the legality of appointing State Ministers. When the other government ministers were struggling to justify the new appointments, Minister Lalith Athulathmudali who was a legal eagle was on his feet to point out that the Constitution provides for the appointment of “other” ministers, apart from ministers and deputy ministers. That’s it. No question was raised thereafter and the number of ministers, deputy ministers and State Ministers exceeded 100.
Who is a non-cabinet minister? Until last month it was very simple, the non-cabinet ministers were the deputy ministers and State Ministers, simply because they were not Cabinet ministers. Now we have non-cabinet ministers apart from those non-cabinet ministers. And the three non-cabinet ministers appointed last month as a new category, had told the media that they also had been given subjects on par with the Cabinet ministers. The only difference was that they did not participate in Cabinet meetings and their Cabinet papers would be submitted to the Cabinet by another Cabinet minister, they explained. They are also another kind of “other” ministers mentioned in the Constitution.
How cleverly has the government violated the 19th Amendment? You can’t increase the number of ministers to more than 30. But you can appoint any number of non-cabinet ministers with same powers and privileges as the Cabinet ministers are vested with. The argument that Parliament members cannot serve the people without ministerial portfolios is ludicrous. It was in a way an admission that they were doing nothing for the people. According to their contention all 225, including the Speaker have to be ministers, so that they can serve the people.
Do all ministers serve the people? Can one cite a single decision taken by the Transport Ministers after 1957 to provide a decent, disciplined and efficient public transport service which has now become a nightmare to the commuters? We have ten transport ministers, including those at the provincial level. But have they ever thought about the millions of man-hours wasted on the roads due to the congestion and attitude of the operators of bus and train services which is hostile to the commuters? We had a very few education ministers who had attempted to transform the education on par with the economic needs of the country. How many agriculture ministers or irrigation ministers thought about the tens of thousands of abandoned lakes in the dry zone? How many of them thought about proper marketing facilities for the farmers?
Yet, a recent newspaper report said that the government spends Rs.7.5 million per month to maintain a minister! Hence, increasing the number of ministers without any justification is a national crime.