The ongoing Clean Sri Lanka initiative, a signature project of the new National People’s Power (NPP) Government, appears to have got off on the wrong foot, attracting more brickbats than accolades ever since its ceremonious launch at the start of the year at the Presidential Secretariat. While no citizen in their right mind will object to the goal of making Sri Lanka a cleaner, more visually appealing nation, the main grouse an increasing number of people appear to be having with the programme is that it seems to have got not only its priorities but also its objectives wrong.
It will be recalled that five years ago, when the Gotabaya Rajapaksa-led Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) Government took office, it too started off by launching a similar if not identical project to beautify the environment. Not only did that regime embark on a programme to clean up neighbourhoods by mobilising the youth who were more than happy to help out, it also motivated them to draw art on run-down public walls to beautify the environment. Even though the immediate results were impressive, the fact that the programme was unsustainable due to its ad hoc nature soon became its undoing.
No doubt the city ambience improved and run-down neighbourhoods overnight transformed into impressive urban spaces, but in the absence of a structured mechanism, the perceived transformation remained restricted to the external aspect while the issues that brought about the ruin and neglect in the first place remained unaddressed.
It is this ad hoc, lopsided approach to fixing a deep-rooted problem with a superficial solution that resulted in its failure and the same youth who so enthusiastically joined the transformation effort two years later becoming the vanguard of a regime change movement targeting that same regime.
It is for this reason that the authorities must learn from the mistakes of the past and see to it that history does not repeat. It is important that the regime resists the temptation to play shenanigans with the very people that planted it in office and make it its business to dive deep and address the core issues that continue to cause decay and ruin. To not do so will be like a doctor prescribing aspirin for a heart attack and not addressing the issues that led to heart failure. While the aspirin might save the day, it will not prevent the inevitable, which effectively sums up the story of the last regime.
To put the latest episode of the Clean Sri Lanka programme in perspective, while the authorities focus exclusively on the external aspects of what is decidedly a deep-rooted societal problem by simply focusing on the trivial aspect like removing external modifications on public transport like buses and three-wheelers, there is zero focus on making these services more people friendly and in fact resemble an actual service to the people.
It is no secret that the twin menace on our roads that drives the fear of Moses into pedestrians and fellow motorists alike are in fact the private buses and three-wheelers. Yet, while they are now being routinely checked and modifications ordered to be removed, their maniacal driving habits continue to be ignored. The only time action is taken is when the public take it upon themselves to challenge these road thugs.
Therefore, it is clear that the same mistake the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration made in only teasing with the transformative exercise is being repeated by the NPP regime. To put it bluntly, people are not bothered whether a three-wheeler taxi has a fancy set of mirrors or some gadget sticking out of its roof, but what they are in fact worried about is driver discipline and commitment to road rules, which are what make for a safer ride. Ditto for the buses.
While the cops seem more concerned about passengers being injured in case of an accident by various modifications on buses and trishaws, they don’t seem to be concerned about preventing such accidents from taking place in the first place, by regularly checking on drivers the same way they do on motorists using their private vehicles.
It is no secret that most private as well as State-run Transport Board bus drivers are almost always high on some substance or another. It is also a common sight to see bus drivers chatting away on mobile phones pasted to their ears while driving using just one hand. Social media is full of such footage. Drivers race each other to the next halt disregarding road rules while the cops look the other way. To the two million-plus tourists who visit this country each year, what is more of a sore sight is a bus overtaking on the wrong side of a road or breaking the speed limit than it having modifications. It is this reality that law enforcement must understand and act on.
Take the three-wheeler drivers who are a law unto themselves at popular tourist attractions, openly fleecing helpless tourists. From the Galle Fort and the Bandaranaike International Airport to Sigiriya and Kandy, these trishaw drivers form themselves into a gang and openly threaten any other service providers like the app-based ones that enter their turf – all for the purpose of cheating and fleecing tourists. Little do they realise that their actions are splashed on social media across the globe, bringing disgrace and disrepute to the nation that is yet struggling to match arrival numbers from seven years ago.
The more the regime focuses on the superficial and makes a show of it while ignoring the deeper issues, the more the tendency for people to subscribe to the Opposition’s assertion that the entire exercise is just a show to divert attention from the issues that matter. Therefore, if the regime is to restore credibility in its Clean Sri Lanka campaign, it must immediately shift focus from the trivial and being reduced to a joke, to matters of substance that are begging for attention.
Towards this end, it must start with cleaning up the country’s image as a corruption-ridden nation where accountability is selective and political impunity reigns. A physically clean Sri Lanka can go hand in hand with that endeavour. One without the other will prove to be unsustainable, as other previous dispensations have learnt the hard way. Therefore, given the benefit of recent history, there is no excuse for the NPP to follow the same pointless route, unless of course the campaign is a diversion, as the Opposition alleges.
Apart from the trishaws and private buses, there are far more important institutions and entities that have been crying out for a clean-up for the longest time, but the regime seems quite content to stick to the trivial. These institutions include the Police, Customs, Excise, and Inland Revenue Departments, all of which are notorious among the public as being corrupt to the core. In addition, there are the public utilities like the Ceylon Electricity Board, Water Board, and Petroleum Corporation that are well-known dens of corruption, but there is little inclination on the part of the Government that has been propelled to office on a mandate of eradicating corruption, malpractice, and wastage, to get on with the job entrusted to it.
Given the confusion surrounding its Clean Sri Lanka campaign and it thus far being limited to the aesthetic aspect, the regime owes the people at the very minimum an explanation on the objectives of the current campaign and how it intends to go about tackling the real clean-up operation that the people voted for, which necessarily involves every arm of the State. Until such time, the current Clean Sri Lanka campaign will remain a media circus with little or no impact on actually cleaning up governance and the nation’s badly scarred image abroad.