A government move to assign some Clean Sri Lanka representatives to Divisional Secretariats countrywide as coordinators has run into stiff resistance. The Sri Lanka Association of Divisional Secretaries and Assistant Divisional Secretaries (SLADA) has written to the Secretary to the President, urging the government to revoke its decision and warning that the proposed move will seriously undermine the independence of the public service.
Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, too, has taken exception to the government plan to assign some JVP cadres to Divisional Secretariats as Clean Sri Lanka coordinators. He told the media yesterday the JVP was trying to infiltrate the state service, and the Opposition would oppose that move tooth and nail.
The SLADA has argued that Sri Lanka already has a long-established administrative framework to ensure effective public service delivery, spanning ministries, departments, provincial councils, district and divisional secretariats down to Grama Niladhari divisions. This system is supported by internal audit units, the National Audit Office, and coordination committees at divisional, district and national levels, which oversee and review programme implementation. While acknowledging some isolated instances of politically influenced conduct of a small number of officials, the SLADA has stressed that the overall administrative structure has functioned as an independent, professional system and its independence must not be compromised.
The government decision to appoint Clean Sri Lanka representatives to Divisional Secretariats should also be viewed against the backdrop of the JVP’s overall strategy to create conditions for establishing what is described in some quarters as a parallel state. JVP stalwart, K. D. Lalkantha, created quite a stir in 2024 by claiming that under a JVP-NPP government legislative and judicial powers would be devolved to villages.
The JVP/NPP is working according to a plan to expand its powerbase through the Constituency Councils or Kottasha Sabha, which remind us of the Citizen Committees or Janatha Committees (JCs) set up by the SLFP-led United Front government (1970-77) purportedly to bring administration closer to the people. The JCs were established in government departments, public corporations, and local administrative units to monitor state administration, advise public officers, help eliminate corruption, delays and waste, encourage public participation in governance and facilitate the implementation of development initiatives. But, in reality, they became highly politicised, with their members undermining the authority of state officials. They clashed with administrators, trade unions and ended up as mere appendages of the government. They were also responsible for the downfall of the UF government. The JVP/NPP is apparently repeating that disastrous experiment.
Old habits are said to die hard. The JVP is accused of using the Clean Sri Lanka programme to infiltrate vital state institutions in a bid to arrogate to itself the powers of the state instead of exercising them through the NPP government for five years. This is something it failed to achieve through extra-parliamentary means for about six decades. Speaking at a recent May Day rally, JVP General Secretary Tilvin Silva stated that the JVP-led government would remain in power indefinitely. Some other JVP bigwigs have said they would not let go of power. Given the JVP’s violent past, such utterances cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric.
It is possible that in a bid to perpetuate its hold on power, the JVP is trying to emulate the Soviet model and set up its cells in state institutions like those established by the Communist party in the USSR to function as its “eyes and ears”. The Soviet system functioned on the principle that the party was the “leading and guiding force” of society. It has been reported that by the late Soviet period, there were hundreds of thousands of such primary organisations, covering nearly every sphere of public life. Those cells did not survive the collapse of the USSR.
Ordinary people are not well disposed towards the state service, characterised by inordinate delays, malpractices and arrogance, and it needs a radical shake-up. What needs to be done is to depoliticise and revitalise the public service, and therefore the ongoing efforts to politicise it further must be defeated. One cannot but endorse the SLADA’s demand that the government revoke its decision to infiltrate the Divisional Secretariats, allowing the existing administrative mechanisms to handle programme implementation lest such precedent should have long-term adverse implications for the independence of the public service.
