Constitutional Reforms are meaningless unless

opposing views are tolerated

December 1, 2014
Wear the same tie as the boss but dont agree to his unlawful orders
Bank of Ceylons retired General Manager Sarath de Silva, addressing the
Sri Jayewardenepura Universitys Public Administration Alumni Association
last week, left an important piece of advice with his audience. He said that
public servants should wear the same V-cut tie as their boss but should
learn not to blindly agree to everything which the boss says if they have
reasons to disagree on ethical or legal grounds.
He did not stop at that. He said that public servants cannot do this if there
is no protection for them when they disagree with their bosses, especially
when those bosses happen to be their political masters.
It is the duty of all professional associations, according to Sarath de Silva, to
canvass for the introduction of safety clauses to the Constitution to protect
the rights of public servants to say no in the event they receive unlawful
orders from their bosses.

Without
protection,
public servants cannot disagree
This is fair enough advice from a seasoned administrator. Many public
servants confide in private that they had to carry out unlawful or unethical
orders of their bosses against their conscience because they have no

protection under the present administrative arrangements. If they do so,

they run the risk of losing their job, pensions and all hopes of career
advancement.
No sensible public servant will dare to take this risk. There have been some
who had dared to do so. But they all had ended up in disaster: frustration,
early retirement and in some cases, facing falsely framed charges against
them.
This is a self-perpetuating system that gives wrong signals to everyone.
When one bold public servant is victimised on account of answering to his
conscience, all others take the cue from the lesson: Be a good boy and
dont try to be smart.
Delivery of justice to society
But public servants are supposed to deliver justice to a people, the goal of
any society. Laws, rules and regulations are framed by society to ensure
that society attains that goal. It is the public service that implements those
laws, rules and regulations. Hence, it is necessary to establish an
administrative system that facilitates public servants to work within the
legal framework designed by society without the fear of being intimated or
persecuted or losing jobs.

Culture
should be conducive for free dialogue
The establishment of such a system is an essential condition for a
progressive society. But it depends on the culture of the boss as well as the
culture of the subordinate. If the boss is arrogant, unwilling to listen and

thinks that his word is the last and subordinates independent view is a
threat, then there is no free dialogue between the boss and the
subordinate.
The chances in such a situation are that the subordinate who knows the
best survival strategy will kill his free mind, allow to be directed by the boss
and become an intellectually disabled person. The creation of such an
intellectually slavish generation is detrimental to the boss, subordinate and
society. It is detrimental to the boss because he will blindly walk into a
pitfall and perish. It is detrimental to the subordinate because he, without
using his faculties for thinking, is killing himself as a person. It is
detrimental to society because societies prosper only when people think
freely and create new things. A society which does not create new things
will move backward and become extinct due to lack of inventions and
innovations. Thus, it is in the interest of everyone to allow people to think
freely and express their thinking freely. But for that to happen, bosses
should be cultured enough to listen to others and subordinates should be
cultured enough to express their mind freely. Both should do so with utmost
respect for each other as proclaimed by Emperor Asoka in his rock edicts
that one should duly honour ones opponents in every way on all
occasions.
Constitutional reforms are meaningless if public servants cannot disagree
Sri Lanka is getting ready to elect a new President roughly in five weeks. An
important policy issue being placed before voters has been the introduction
of constitutional reforms and the establishment of good governance in the
country. But such constitutional reforms will become incomplete if
democratic forms of government and good governance are not supported
by a public service which can deliver justice to people by saying no to
unlawful or unethical orders given to them by their bosses. They must have
an environment to do so without being victimised or persecuted.
Authoritarianism does not bring prosperity to a society in the long run
Democracy, good governance and the rule of law have been upheld as
essential ground conditions for creating a prosperous society. Constitutional
reforms with proper checks and balances will establish democracy and rule
out authoritarianism.

As this writer has argued in a previous article in this series entitled An

authoritarian regime for economic prosperity? Not even a little bit will work
in the long run, democracy has been the best to develop human intellect
while authoritarianism kills the same.
The following point was made specifically in this article: A democracy is the
best system for people to develop their human capital because new
knowledge requires freedom of speech and freedom of expression. The
authoritarian rulers could suppress these freedoms having considered them
as a nuisance. But it hinders human knowledge development which is
necessary for continuous economic growth. The Ukrainian emigrant novelist
Marina Lewycka has explained in her novel, A Short History of Tractors in
Ukrainian how the suppression of free thought and free expression during
the Soviet regime killed the innovativeness of scientists in Ukraine and why
many of them became alcoholics and others migrated to Europe and North
America to escape the oppressive regime (available at:
http://www.ft.lk/2013/03/18/authoritarian-regime-for-economic-prosperitynot-even-a-little-bit-will-work-in-the-long-run/ ).
If the boss is arrogant, unwilling to listen and thinks that his word is the
last and subordinates independent view is a threat, then there is no free
dialogue between the boss and the subordinate
Democracy, good governance and the rule of law have been upheld as
essential ground conditions for creating a prosperous society. Constitutional
reforms with proper checks and balances will establish democracy and rule
out authoritarianism
There must be proper and strong institutions for public servants to act
independently and according to their conscience. Institutions in economics
mean not just formal organisations or bodies. Institutions mean the
collective value system of a people, what they believe as right and how
they respond to unethical and illegal orders coming from the top. The
weakening of the institutional framework of a society leads to disaster and
when it happens in a public organisation, it causes irreparable damage to
the wellbeing of a society
The rule of law always matters
Good governance and rule of law will deliver justice to societys members.
This writer has consistently argued in this series that good governance and

the rule of law are the main pillars on which a just and prosperous society
stands. In an article titled The rule of law to the fore again: But who are its
sworn enemies?, this was what this writer remarked: Of course, the State
could be the biggest enemy of the Rule of Law since the politicians who rule
a country on behalf of the State and the public officers who manage a
country on their behalf could violate all these essential aspects that
constitute the Rule of Law.
In democracies, when politicians assume power, they declare in public that
they are simply the custodians of the wealth of the society and not the
owners. Similarly, public officers are simply servants and not masters of the
society. What society expects from both groups is to function as fair,
impartial, just and equitable protectors of the rights of the members of
society. If they do not do so, they dishonour the sacred oath they have
taken at the time of assuming their respective duties
Weakened institutional framework is a recipe for disaster
There must be proper and strong institutions for public servants to act
independently and according to their conscience. Institutions in economics
mean not just formal organisations or bodies. Institutions mean the
collective value system of a people, what they believe as right and how
they respond to unethical and illegal orders coming from the top. The
weakening of the institutional framework of a society leads to disaster and
when it happens in a public organisation, it causes irreparable damage to
the wellbeing of a society.
This writer drew attention to this factor in another article in
this series titled Rule of Law or Rule of Men: What will usher
prosperity and development? taking the case of the Bank of
Thailand as an example. This is what he said: The weak
economic governance had been fuelled by the disregard for
the rule of law, downgrading the democratic institutions that
would have checked the abuse of power and a colluding
judiciary that had endorsed sheepishly every wrong action of
the political authorities. Hence, if the economic governance
and the rule of law are in a mess, they reasoned out that any
tinkering of macroeconomic policy will not allow a country to escape the
greater evil of impending economic disaster. So, the combination of all

these features was the ideal recipe for sudden and unexpected economic
collapse.
Yes-men in Bank of Thailand triggered 1997-98 Asian financial crisis
In this article, how the weakened institutional framework within the Bank of
Thailand led to the Thai Baht crisis that triggered the East Asian Financial
Crisis of 1997-98 was explained as follows: The importance of rule of law
and economic governance and the ensuing protection of both private and
public property rights for preventing economic calamities and ensuring
sustainable growth became prominent in the behaviour of the Bank of
Thailand prior to its triggering the East Asian crisis in mid-1997.
Despite growing public criticism that the Bank of Thailand should not
protect the Thai baht rate at the expense of the countrys foreign reserves,
the bank, led by Governor Rerngchai Marakanond, continued to go on
spending reserves unabated. As reported in a subsequent paper published
in 2001 under the title Rerngchai: A Sinner or Scapegoat? (available at
http://thanong.tripod.com/112820012.htm), the bank blew away some $ 30
billion out of its reserves before it had to allow baht to depreciate in the
market from baht 25 a dollar to baht 48 a dollar.
The subsequent inquiries revealed that internal governance in the Bank of
Thailand was so weak that its senior officers had simply endorsed the action
by the governor without providing sound counsel. Why did they do so? They
had wanted to protect their jobs, ensure their career advancement by
supporting the views of the governor and continue to enjoy the perks that
had been offered to them by the banks management. But later after all the
disasters had hit not only Thailand but also the entire region, Governor
Rerngchai was charged for criminal negligence of losing the countrys
valuable foreign reserves and in 2005 fined some $ 4 billion plus interest as
fine by Bangkok High Court. In an appeal against this judgment, in 2011, he
was cleared by the Court of Appeal but not before he had to suffer,
according to his own words, with a complete shattering of his emotional
and mental wellbeing (available at: http://www.ft.lk/2012/05/28/rule-of-lawor-rule-of-men-what-will-usher-prosperity-and-development/ ).
Constitutional reforms should lead to building open societies
The prosperity of any society depends on how freely its members think and

express their views. Democracy can bring in prosperity to people only if it

can guarantee these two fundamental rights. To do so, constitutional
reforms that aim at establishing democracy should create an open society
rather than a closed society.
American Financier George Soros has described how this happens in an
open society in his 2000 book under the same title as follows: The concept
of open society is based on the recognition that our understanding of the
world is inherently imperfect. Those who claim to be in possession of the
ultimate truth are making a false claim, and they can enforce it only by
enforcing their views on those who differ. The result of such intimidation is a
closed society in which freedom of thought and expression is suppressed.
By contrast, if we recognise our fallibility, we can gain a better
understanding of reality without ever attaining perfect knowledge. Acting
on that understanding, we can create a society that is open to never ending
improvement. Open society falls short of perfection, but it has the great
merit of assuring freedom of thought and speech and giving ample scope to
experimentation and creativity (p 3).
Bosses should set example
of listening to opposing views
What Soros has proposed for society at large has to be practised in every
unit of society from household to government departments and ministries
to large corporate bodies. It is the freedom of thought and freedom of
expression that lead to creativity, the fundamental requirement for a
progressive and prosperous society.
While this can be guaranteed by constitutional provisions, the real test of
having it in society depends on building a culture conducive for each other
to respect the opposing views. The best starting point to have this culture in
society is to start it with bosses themselves as an example to those who are
below them.
(W.A Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri
Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com )