-By A Special Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -03.June.2025, 10.20 PM) In most democracies, the Auditor General’s Department is the venerated gatekeeper of fiscal accountability — a red-tape knight with a calculator in one hand and a copy of the constitution in the other. In Sri Lanka, however, the role seems to have morphed over the years into something far more theatrical: the quiet stagehand who cleans up after the party, occasionally muttering, “Well, that was expensive,” while the drunken guests stumble out, richer and remorseless.
Recent revelations by the National People's Power (NPP) government have not just lifted the veil — they’ve set fire to the whole tent. As it turns out, ministries across the Rajapaksa-Ranil era were treating public funds as if they were a family inheritance, available for liberal consumption by ministers, relatives, contractors, and sometimes even random schoolmates of the politically connected. It’s corruption theatre, but nobody is quite sure whether the Auditor General was in the audience, behind the curtain, or on stage taking a bow.
Let’s begin with the most grotesque set-piece: the expansion of the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA). The project’s original budget, suspiciously vague to begin with, ballooned faster than an MP's travel allowance in Geneva. As NPP officials now comb through the ashes, they’re discovering that what was supposed to be a world-class terminal has turned into an overpriced shell with broken escalators and vending machines that cost more than a rural hospital. Somewhere in the middle of all this, the Auditor General’s report—when it finally materialised—read more like a book of condolences than a forensic audit.
Take the Ministry of Health, where tendering for critical medicines turned into a bureaucratic version of “Deal or No Deal” — except every deal was suspiciously profitable for someone’s uncle. The most alarming example is the procurement of hemoglobin supplements, a seemingly routine purchase that ended up involving shell companies, triple-invoicing, and suppliers with no traceable addresses. Hospitals ran out of basic stock, children died of anemia, and the only thing the Auditor General’s Department managed to report was, “There appears to have been a lapse in procurement protocols.”
A lapse? That’s like calling the Titanic a boating mishap.
Similarly, the state-owned retail giant Sathosa, which has long served as the government’s preferred laundry for financial dirt, found itself embroiled in overpriced rice deals, expired canned fish, and sugar imports that disappeared like taxpayer hope. Not a peep from the AG's Department until investigative journalists practically shoved the receipts under their door.
Where, one wonders, was the fiscal moral compass of the nation?
To be fair, Sri Lanka’s Auditor General Department is often described by insiders as “understaffed,” “underpaid,” and “under pressure.” This triumvirate of misfortune makes it an ideal habitat for passive oversight and aggressive tea breaks.
Whistleblower protections? Non-existent. Independent oversight of the Auditor General’s conduct? About as real as a unicorn in Galle Face Green. The office does, on occasion, issue sternly worded reports, which land quietly in parliamentary committee rooms, only to be ignored with the efficiency of a seasoned pickpocket at Pettah Market.
In most countries, the exposure of billions in misappropriated funds across ministries, departments, and foreign missions would prompt resignations, prosecutions, and possibly the nationalisation of pitchfork factories. In Sri Lanka, it prompts a sleepy press release.
The Foreign Ministry, once the island’s only remaining dignified arm of statecraft, has now been revealed as a diplomatic extension of the family WhatsApp group. Under Ali Sabry and previous ministers, overseas missions were generously stocked with relatives, in-laws, and occasionally people who’d never held a passport before. Former beauty queens were given diplomatic ranks. Personal drivers found themselves promoted to “economic counsellors.” All funded by the taxpayer, of course.
One mission in Europe reportedly spent more on chauffeur-driven luxury cars in a single month than the Ministry of Education spent on textbooks in a year. And yet, again, the Auditor General’s Department chose to clear its throat politely and move on. Not even a footnote on nepotism.
If one were looking for a metaphor for state mismanagement, SriLankan Airlines offers a fitting one: a debt-ridden bird flapping one broken wing while ferrying VIPs to foreign weddings. The airline has racked up losses close to Rs. 400 billion over the past decade — and nobody in the Auditor General’s Department seemed remotely curious about the fuel procurement contracts, aircraft leasing deals, or in-flight catering arrangements involving companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Perhaps someone in the AG’s office did ask a question — but one suspects it was merely, “Will there be a complimentary ticket in it for me?”
Enter the International Monetary Fund, our perennial financial messiah, which, in classic IMF fashion, demanded austerity, transparency, and structural reforms. But while the IMF could sniff out a tea subsidy from Geneva, it failed to notice that the watchdog in Colombo had neither bark nor bite. No demands were made to reform the Auditor General’s Department. No conditionalities included the establishment of an independent fiscal oversight commission. Instead, the Sri Lankan public were told to tighten their belts — right after someone else bought all the belts using embezzled funds.
Now, the NPP government is attempting to install a real-time whistleblowing system within the Auditor General’s Department. One can only hope it’s more sophisticated than a rusty suggestion box in the ministry corridor. If the Auditor General is to be more than a glorified stenographer, the system must allow anonymous reporting, AI-assisted audit triggers, and public access to summaries of major audits.
But reforming a department that has grown comfortable with complicity is like asking a lifelong vegetarian to grill steaks. It’s going to require political will, legal reform, and most importantly, an Auditor General with spine — not one made entirely of sponge.
One of the boldest suggestions now on the table is the establishment of an Independent Oversight Body to monitor the performance of the Auditor General’s Department itself. This meta-accountability mechanism, while sure to raise eyebrows in bureaucratic circles, is perhaps the only way to ensure that the Department doesn’t spend the next decade rearranging spreadsheets while Rome burns.
Parliamentarians across the aisle will naturally resist this — oversight is not a sport politicians in Sri Lanka enjoy unless they are doing the overseeing. But it is precisely this culture of selective scrutiny that has landed the country in its current financial and moral quagmire.
The Auditor General’s Department failed. That much is no longer up for debate. The only remaining question is whether it failed because it was asleep, silenced, or seduced.
To restore public trust, the NPP must push for radical transparency: digitise audit findings, release procurement data to the public, and publish red-flag reports every quarter. Anything less would be a betrayal of the public’s already frayed patience.
The Sri Lankan people have been robbed. Not just of money, but of faith — in institutions, in democracy, in the idea that the powerful can be held to account. It is the duty of the new government to remind the Auditor General that their job isn’t to politely observe the heist, but to sound the alarm — loudly, publicly, and without fear or favour.
Because in the end, silence is also corruption. And the ledgers of Sri Lanka are screaming for justice.
-By A Special Correspondent
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by (2025-06-03 16:49:43)
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