| by R.M.B. Senanayake
I fully agree with what Tissa says. I merely want to explain further the concept of "independence" of the public service in this response as an addendum to what Tissa has written.
But with the emergence of the nation state and the modern centralized administration, a bureaucracy emerged. The new bureaucracy was later explained by Max Weber (1864-1920). His concept of bureaucracy was an organization of non-elected officials of a government or organization who implements the rules, laws, and functions of their institution. Of course this took place in the West. But the rudiments of a bureaucracy existed in China where for the first time officials came to be selected through an open examination. But a hierarchically organized public service with delineated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, with action taken on the basis of and recorded in written rules, minutes, circulars, regulations etc. is the bureaucratic model. This model emerged in Europe in the 19th century after the Industrial Revolution. The officials need expert training, rules are implemented by neutral officials, and career advancement depends on technical qualifications judged by organization, not by individuals. It is recognized as the most efficient and rational way of organizing public administration and the principles have spread to the military and large scale business organizations as well. The hierarchical principle was also adopted very early by the Roman Catholic Church.
The bureaucratic model took time to evolve even in the West. In England there was the struggle for power between the King and Parliament. The King appointed all the officials who were responsible only to him. So after Parliament pressurized the King to recognize the Bill of Rights and asked him to rule according to the law, Parliament held the King’s officials responsible for acting in terms of the law and not according to the arbitrary whims and fancies of the King. The King’s officials were often in difficulty having to serve the King and also being held responsible by Parliament for their actions. Parliament claimed the power to impeach officials. This power of Parliament to impeach officials was allowed to lapse in Britain but the Founding Fathers of the U.S Constitution enacted the power to impeach officials which is still there.
Democracy is government according to law and has no room for arbitrary decisions by the Executive whether it is an elected Executive or a hereditary ruler. A President, a Minister or any other official, elected or unelected holding office as a superior is required to give his orders in writing and these orders are preserved as the justification for the subsequent action which followed from such orders. Neither the President nor any Minister or high official has any power which is not conferred by the law or the Constitution. Our President cannot rule by decree and any regulation he makes must be approved or tabled in Parliament and gazetted for the information of the public. The President or any Minister is expected to give orders in writing to the bureaucracy. But after 1956 this practice has been falling into disuse and Presidents and Ministers have been giving oral orders to the bureaucracy. This is not in keeping with democracy.
Incidentally, the official language is the language of record keeping in government offices and the courts. This system of oral orders came to be in vogue although I remember on one occasion when the Minister, Felix Dias Bandaranaike, cross examined me about the evidence on which I had dismissed one Upali Weerasinghe who was a supporter of his. When he was cross examining me, the then Chief Justice Victor Tennekoon was a passive observer who was there for some other business with the Minster. After his cross examination the Minister turned to the Chief Justice and asked his opinion and to my eternal gratitude and surprise the Chief Justice said the evidence was sufficient to dismiss him. But the Minister would not be outdone. The next day I received a direction from the Minister in writing directing the Board of Directors of the CWE to reinstate him forthwith. But there were other Ministers who would make oral requests rather than give written directions. They often referred to recruitments and transfers.
What about this concept of "independence" of the public service? Actually the public service is subordinate to the political executive and does not enjoy the type of independence required by the judiciary. So does the bureaucracy need ‘independence’? Yes, a type of limited independence in technical matters which they perform where they have the expertise which the political Executive – be it the President or the Minister does not have. They have been elected by the people to represent them but not to govern them directly as in ancient Athens where a set of officials were elected once in three years to run the administration since they did not have a bureaucracy. This scheme was condemned by Plato and Aristotle who thought it would lead to administrative chaos. In order to get a better class of representatives they outlawed (exiled) mob orators and demagogues and even the great Thucydides barely escaped this fate.
The need for bureaucrats to exercise independence in making technical decisions is for the sake of efficient governance. A friend of mine, a senior irrigation engineer, told me that the Chief Minister of the province wanted him to dig ponds in the irrigations tanks. When he expressed his opposition he was transferred. Consider the recent Z score fiasco. I understand that the Commissioner of Examinations is a political appointee appointed not for his specialist knowledge but for his political loyalty. He apparently knows nothing of elementary statistics which says that two different populations of data cannot be combined except after standardization on the basis of their means and variances. The great damage done to education by this one man’s blunder points to the need for competent men to be appointed to posts and for the Ministers not to interfere in technical decisions.
But as Tissa Devendra has pointed out, the Presidents and the Ministers including President J.R. Jayewardene have interfered in technical and administrative decisions where they are not competent to decide. They have interfered with the technical decisions of the bureaucrats. The late Cyril Herath, my friend, told me about how he was penalized for refusing to promote a certain police officer who had a bad record. The police service has from then gone from bad to worse and has ceased to be the police service of the nation and the State but has instead become the outfit of the ruling political party.
Prior to the 19th century, staffing of most public administrations even in Europe and the USA was rife with nepotism, favoritism, and political patronage which were referred to as a "spoils system" in USA. But Civil Service Commissions came to be appointed to ensure a meritocracy and to provide protection for public servants who exercised their discretion honestly but incurred the wrath of the Political Executive. The 17th Amendment established the Constitutional Council which appointed Independent Commissions. But the 18th Amendment has done away with all that and reduced the public service, the police and even the judiciary to the status of institutions which are the creature of the President. The independence of the bureaucrats to act on the basis of expertise and knowledge is no longer possible. But when nincompoops and idiots are appointed to the high posts on the basis of political loyalty rather than talent and competence the bureaucratic model has perished.
 Mr. Tissa Devendra has written a lucid account of the deterioratio...){kind=link}
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