Gajalakshmi Paramasivam – 08 April  2015

Transparency or  Victimization?

When I sued Mr. John Howard – I was suing the individual. Hence it was Gaja Lakshmi Paramasivam v John Howard. Otherwise it ought to read Commonwealth of Australia v Commonwealth of Australia.  The Australian Courts in all instances listed me as an individual but afforded the Position Title to those who held high positions.  What happens with that is – the charges/complaints  based on  genuine Belief  would affect the Position also – if the institutional status is used and the other side is of genuine belief. I believe that was how Mr. Howard was present when 9/11 happened and that Bali bombing happened during his leadership. Both events were beyond his control because he did not genuinely practice Equal Opportunity Laws – as confirmed through the above listing also.

In Sri Lanka – when the Government claimed victory over LTTE after including the Eastern Leader of the LTTE – Karuna on its side – the Government in effect was covering up its own Administrative weaknesses due to which it was not able to prevent the development and expansion of the LTTE. Thus by passing on the blame  - the Government separated LTTE and its supporters – which is exactly what the LTTE wanted.  Thereafter, the Sri Lankan Government did not have the authority to Administer LTTE and its supporters. If the Sri Lankan Government had treated the military action as ‘Administrative Punishment’ – it would have continued to have the authority to punish through an Administrative process. Likewise every person who takes the side of the Government through belief. Then the charges would have been Sri Lanka v Sri Lanka.

This Administrative weakness seems also  to be with the current occupiers of Government Positions in  Sri Lanka – as highlighted through Sri Lankan Airlines Board of Inquiry headed by anti-corruption advocate and senior lawyer J. C. Weliamuna.

As per the official news by the Government of Sri Lanka:

The Weliamuna report recommends criminal investigations into the entire re-fleeting process and have noted instances where former Chairman Wickramasinghe, a brother-in-law of Mahinda Rajapakse, should be prosecuted.

As per the published Annual Report – Sri Lankan Airlines is a Public Limited Liability Company with the following Shareholders:

Share Ownership                                          No.of Shares             % of Holding

Government of Sri Lanka                               26,275,436                        51.06%

Bank of Ceylon                                               12,115,570                        23.54%

People’s Bank                                                   4,236,135                          8.23%

National Savings Bank                                     4,236,135                          8.23%

Employees Provident Fund                              1,863,676                          3.62%

Others                                                                           2,736,511                          5.32%

The Auditors who certified the Published Accounts of the National Carrier are:

Ernst & Young, Chartered Accountants

What were all of the above parties doing when Mr. Nishantha Wickremasinghe as Chairman was acting corruptly? 

Let us not forget that the current President – Mr. Maitripala Sirisena as well as the current Prime Minister Mr. Ranil Wickramasinghe were both in Government – one as Minister and the other as Leader of the Opposition when the Auditor’s Report was presented to Parliament. According to the latest published report available on the net, the Auditors state:

[….The Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) continued to demonstrate its commitment to the Company by making the second capital infusion of Rs. 12,600.08 million (2012 - Rs. 14,286.32 million) as per the recapitalization plan approved for the Company in July 2011. This funding was timely, and the capital infusion strengthened the Company’s financial position. However, such infusion was not in the form of liquid cash and the challenges of cash constraints continued to prevail. The cash constraints impacted the Company’s plans for expansion/modernization and its business operations.  On a positive note, subsequent to Reporting date the said Treasury Bonds have been used by the Company to (Financial Year 2013/14 onwards) raise cash. Consequently, it is expected that such cash proceeds would greatly enhance the cash flow position.

Despite the challenges, the Company was able to significantly invest in expanding and modernizing the airline and required infrastructure over the last 3 year period in order to increase operational efficiencies and also to deliver a competitive product to the customer. In line with this objective, the Company made a decision during the year to proceed with a re-

fleeting exercise to replace its wide-body fleet, especially the six A 340-300 aircraft fleet which as at reporting date has an average age exceeding 15 years. These aircraft will be replaced when their lease terms expire between third quarter 2014/15 to third quarter 2015/16 by a modern fleet of twin engined A330-300 aircraft.  This will bring in much needed

operational efficiencies (reduced fuel burn and maintenance costs) and the airline would also be in a position to offer a product with all modern passenger comforts which is on par or better than what is offered by competitor airlines. The Company expects this re-fleeting exercise to yield a significant positive impact on its future revenue generating capacity.]

If the current Prime Minister had felt ownership in Sri Lankan Airlines – he would have heard the alarm bells ringing as a shareholder representing the common Sri Lankan in the National Carrier. For his part Mr. Weliamuna who is listed as Chairman Transparency   International Sri Lanka, seems to have carried out a private investigative assignment for Mr. Ranil Wickramasinghe. Sri Lankan Airlines Board of Directors together with its Auditors have the responsibility to take appropriate action against both these individuals on behalf of the institution/profession on the basis of  defamation. Was the Government as a shareholder – entitled to undertake such an investigation and report publicly against a  Limited Liability Company – which lives as a separate entity to any of its shareholders?  These are basics in Sovereignty which seem to have been abandoned by the current government for political gains by impressing voters cheaply.

My alarm bells rang when the person who included Mr. Weliamuna in his email list wrote to me as follows:

[Dear ms. Gajalakshmi Paramasivam,

I would appreciate if you henceforth will kindly ensure that you do not circulate mail to my entire circulation data base of e addresses received in error by you, as it is spam mail to them, it is a definite act of disturbance of their due privacy and considered unethical.

I trust you will please oblige]

I was surprised and initially a bit upset by this because I respected the person who included me in that group email while circulating his work. I responded as follows:

[Thank you Mr. …...  I am indeed surprised that you consider my emails to be of ‘spam’ category. It is even more disappointing that you write on behalf of others.  You yourself have sent me  public emails from time to time and given this response I categorize you as an unfair person. Such a person is not fit for public life. I will certainly remove this group from my address list – because they did come through you.  There are some who are in my other lists and I would be  happy to remove them from those lists if they write directly to me.

Just a parting observation – I find that from time to time email receivers react to particular topics strongly and that seems to be their Achilles Heel. I conclude that yours is the topic covered by this particular email

Gajalakshmi Paramasivam]

At that time I had not checked the details and was not conscious of Mr. Weliamuna being part of that email group. But through my Australian experiences – especially with the University of New South Wales and the Federal Government – I have registered the realization that to the extent I am true – I invoke the other’s Truth during their Natural moment. Where the other person thinks I am of low status – low enough to be  a number which is the parallel of untouchability in the hierarchical system – and in real terms I am of equal or higher status than that person and I express myself within those limits of my status  – I invoke their Truth at a time when they don’t like what I say / write and they think that they are immune from any punishment by or through me. Hence my above comments about their Achilles Heel. It’s the other side of Facebook and LinkedIn connections – except these are natural and are therefore once manifested are beyond the direct control of both sides.  They have to go through the system of Truth in the Court of Natural Justice / Conscience – for us to redeem credits.  

Other requests followed the above even though I had said that I was going to delete that group. Below is communication with one of them – which is relevant to this particular topic relating to Sri Lankan Airlines’ Accountability:

2IC : ‘Please remove mine as well and save me the bother of deleting your emails unopened. Thanks’

Gaja: So the Truth comes out!  How did you know about the contents of my email if you did not open ANY of my emails???? Little wonder there is corruption in Sri Lanka. Every lie to insult someone is a unit of corruption

2IC : The truth is If you look at my email carefully I was not responding to your email (which was deleted unopened) but joined someone else who wanted to escape from email harassment. You have insulted many in the last few minutes for simply asking to be removed from your email list. PNG is where you belong.  I have blocked your email  account and never want you to pollute my inbox with venomous emails. You are a disgrace to Mr A T Benedict????

Gaja: More Truth!  Without reading my emails how did you know about my PNG connection or for that matter that AT Benedict is my Accounting guru?  - If Mr. Benedict did believe in the Double Entry Principles he taught us – then every harassment must come with its Equal and Opposite Excitement.  At group level – there was no excitement on my part.  It was simple sharing as in sharing of Accumulated Reserves – Reserves of Sri Lankan wisdom. As an individual if you felt harassed – then you must have had excitement through similar activities without earning that pleasure.  Hence the loss – in the name of harassment. I feel Mr. Benedict’s blessings. Do you? Or is that also used without authority.  Now that you have responded again – here is another dose about how you could be generating Terrorism karma – unit by unit of insult: ‘No Country No Name’ article appended.

That was the end of that conversation. It is however sad that the Sri Lankans have failed to uphold the ethics of their respective professions. My communication below with the New South Wales Auditor General would confirm my commitment to such ethics. I used the email system to respond to a public statement by the Auditor General who recommended that  Client Performance Indicators be used by Auditors. I wrote stating that that was in breach of the Separation of Powers between Management and Auditors. The communication with the Auditor General is listed in Appendix 1 to my book Naan Australian -  as follows:

[Re Public challenge of misleading statements of principles by the New South Wales (Australia) Auditor General Mr. Bob Sendt:
Mr. Sendt wrote on 20 November 2003 in response to my Public demand for him to pay his Dues as an Accountant::
Ms Param, I fully understand that auditors are not to participate in the management of the entities they audit. That is basic. What I said in my report is that external financial reports only give a partial view of the performance of many public entities. Such entities are not established to earn a profit or a return on assets, but to provide services to the public. So to give a true and fair view of how well they are providing services, they also produce non-financial performance indicators. If financial reports are required to be audited – to give the public confidence in their accuracy – then so too should the performance indicators. I fail to see how you can state that this is participating in the management of the entity.
Bob Sendt
NSW Auditor General
My response to the above indicates the deep wisdom I have in Audit and Compliance, largely based on my Sri Lankan training:
Thank you Mr. Sendt for  the prompt response. Most progressive organizations produce both – Financial and Non-Financial Performance Indicators. They  are both for MANAGEMENT purposes and reflect the THINKING and WORK_IN_PROGRESS. If you use Performance Indicators – then you are thinking with them. This is like the Executive Government participating in the Judicial process. Your Non-Financial Reports are the Legal records that these organizations are required to maintain – such as the Recruitment and Employee Assessment records. Where there is a big gap between Law and Practice – it requires YOUR staff to do the additional work. Taking the Performance Indicators distracts you away from this work. It is in breach of the Doctrine of Separation of  Powers. These organizations must be allowed to confidentially do the cooking and it’s up to your staff to do the spy work from the finished product to the LAW and not to their dreams and goals. You are seeking the short path because your staff are not trained to find out from the client staff what is going on. Staff often ‘hide’ information from you because you are third party. So they should. That way your staff would improve their skills. Using client-staff’s work-in-progress deters your staff from thinking through their own specialty = AUDIT on the basis of existing LAW. Then we would become a uniform society instead of a diverse society challenging each other – you within the existing law and the operational staff towards tomorrow’s laws. Challenging leads to creativity – as you can see from me. Gandhi also said that the night he was thrown out of the first class compartment of the South African RAILWAYS was his most creative experience.
You need to get the client organization to publish their non-financial reports that are mandatorily maintained. Public service organizations primarily make goodwill. This can also be positive or negative – profits or losses. They are collected together and are balanced with the total costs through Common Funds. It will be useful for you to develop a standard dollar value for these legal requirements so the People can SEE and know the Truth. Your role is not to help them make a profit but to report whether they are and how much. How about doing one on UNSW? Or State Rail?
Thank you again for responding. It has helped deeply.
Regards,
Gaja ( effectively in custody)

I now ask the Sri Lankan Government whether or not – like Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa – this current Government also has acted in breach of the Doctrine of Separation of Powers – between the Executive (Sri Lankan Airlines) and the Government as the Public Watchdog  (The Board of Inquiry headed by outside Lawyer)?

The Government as shareholder is part of Sri Lankan Airlines with loyalty first to Sri Lankan Airlines fellow owners – not only through cash but through genuine work and sacrifice of earned benefits.  To the extent any member of the Board is sued – the Government is suing itself.  The punishment must also be suffered by the Government – through the person holding the current head of Government position.

This investigation and reporting is an extreme example of Transparency gone wrong. In a subjective system Confidentiality is the key to harmony and peace.  

As for eligibility of staff for their positions – the reports says:

[The BOI has found CEO Chandrasena unsuitable for the job and was surprised to discover that he was paid a minimum monthly salary of 1.5 million rupees on top of other perks and he had also enjoyed salaries simultaneously from his other appointments.

There had been a time when he drew a salary as Mobitel CEO as well as Mihin Lanka CEO. The BOI recommends criminal prosecutions of Chandrasena as well as Wickramasinghe, among other senior management staff.]

I questioned the authority of the Legal Officer and the Admin Decisions Tribunal to whom I complained against staff of University of New South Wales . This listed in Appendix. An inquiring officer is acting in breach of Doctrine of Separation of Powers when such inquiring officer assumes the position of recruiter.

The Weliamuna Report is a Waste of Public Resources and a Distraction.

Appendix (12 of Naan Australian)

ADMIN DECISIONS TRIBUNAL

In terms of the Justice system – where ‘facts’ are actively produced by all participants in an experience, as in the democratic system – the decision needs to be driven by ‘facts’ produced at that time by the people physically present. Where all physical participants do not produce facts or where facts produced by all participants is not included in decision making, it is not Muruga’s system of observation, identification  and majority vote.

UNSW solicitor Carol Kirby, for example produced through the Adminsitrative Decisions Tribunal the fact that my Sri  Lankan Chartered Accountancy was considered to be inferior to any Australian degree. We were discussing why I was terminated and why I did not get the positions I applied for after termination:

Mr. Bartley (Judicial member of the panel of judges) to me: Interrupting you there, what does all you have spoken to us about in the last 10 minutes relate to, because it’s said that the complaints in respect of which you have come here have not been made out. All you’ve done – and it’s been said you’re mostly complaining about your work conditions and working there and that’s all you’ve been speaking about at the moment and the Anti-Discrimination Act doesn’t cover any of the things you’ve been speaking about. (My complaint was of unlawful racial discrimination at my workplace – the University of NSW)

Mrs. Paramasivam: No, I’m addressing what Ms Oakley (UNSW’s hired  barrister)  said. Whatever she said I’m responding to that and telling you….

Mr. Bartley: But what are you responding to though?

Mrs. Paramasivam: But you did not ask that question of Ms Oakley. Why was she referring to those if they were not relevant to the Act?

Mr. Bartley: Yes, well, go on.

……….

Mrs. Paramasivam: Under educational requirements a degree with substantial experience

Mr. Bartley: No you’ve mentioned qualifications. What Mr. McDonald (Tribunal Member) wants to know, what qualifications---

Mrs. Paramasivam: I have

Mr. Bartley: ---- no degrees or qualifications other than chartered accountancy (Sri Lankan). Is that right?

Mrs. Paramasivam: I do have other qualifications but that is the highest.

Mr. Bartley: No, Listen to me.

Mrs. Paramasivam: Sorry

Mr. Bartley: You have no degrees and no formal qualifications other than chartered accountancy.

Mrs. Paramasivam: No I do have

Mr. Bartley: Well, what other one have you got?

Mrs. Paramasivam: I’m a member of the ---I have qualified to enroll as a member of the National Institute of Accountants in Australia which is a professional body.

Mr. Bartley: Well, you just said you have chartered accountancy but that is ---

Mrs. Paramasivam: Because that to me is the highest qualification, so.

Mr. Bartley: I see, well, that is the only qualification you have. Is that right?

(Confirming he did not think that that was enough to qualify as a degree)

Mrs. Paramasivam: That is not the only one, that’s the highest one I consider.

Mr. Bartley: What’s the other one?

Mrs. Paramasivam: Eligibility to – I qualified under Chartered Secretaries and Corporate Managers here in Australia.

Mr. Bartley: You what?

Mrs. Paramasivam: The Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Corporate Managers

(My Australian qualifications were obtained  largely by using my Sri Lankan knowledge. Hence to me the Sri Lankan qualification was superior to my Australian qualifications)

Mr. McDonald: Right

Mrs. Paramasivam: ---and the National Institute of Accountants

Mr. Bartley: Yes, all right, go on.

Ms Paramasivam: I’m offended that you made that statement that I had no other qualifications. (By now I knew that the UNSW barrister had successfully  indoctrinated Mr. Bartley. That is the whole purpose in bringing in barristers even though the UNSW has its own solicitor and a Faculty of Law in addition to Community Legal Center).

Mr. Bartley: You don’t have to be offended because I was trying to find out what you did have. (Neither the UNSW lawyer nor the panel of judges had the jurisdiction to enter into my suitability for the positions I had applied for but failed to win. As per the UNSW Recruitment Guide even the recruitment panel was not allowed to question the validity of overseas qualifications. Given the opportunity all these lawyers suddenly became recruitment experts. UNSW had the responsibility to produce the objectively measurable outcomes on the basis of Advertised Selection Criteria.  The fact that they did not do that but embarked on the discussion of my merit as per their subjective thinking – established that they did not have the objective evidence. As for Mr. Bartley he was performing miserably  in his position as a legal judge. It was an insult to be evaluated by him for my suitability for employment within the UNSW. My feelings were brought out as follows:).

Ms Paramasivam: But you could have asked me, you could have asked me whether I had any other qualifications

Mr. Bartley: That’s right, yes. Keep going.

Later:

Mr. Bartley: Ms Paramasivam, would you please stop talking. You don’t listen to anything that’s being said to you from the bench today. You’re taking no notice of anything we’re saying to you. If you would just listen occasionally to what’s being said to you from the bench you could find it quite helpful but you seem to have a closed mind that if anyone puts anything to you you don’t agree with that’s the end of it.

Ms Paramasivam: I am listening sir, but….…

Mr. Bartley: Madam, you are not. If you would listen to….

Ms Paramasivam: If I don’t’ listen I cannot answer the points

Mr. Bartley: You don’t answer the point, you dodge around the point, you answer what you want to say. (In other words I was not being meekly obedient to him)

Ms Paramasivam: If you want to discourage me that way that’s fine but I am also trying to tell you what the reality is. (The question of how to measure unlawful discrimination at the workplace  was raised by the lady member of the judicial panel. I was responding to that question and Mr. Bartley got offended – indicating that he was irritated that he had to include all this in his decision making when he was expecting to ‘close’ the case as if I was an ignorant litigant from a remote corner of the world, wasting his Australian time).