First year of AKD Government: Is it RW in driving seat with a difference?

It was prudent on AKD’s part, as I had argued earlier in this series’, to continue with IMF's EFF to which Sri Lanka had entered during the previous RW’s presidency.

- W.A. Wijewardena

One thing to be remembered is that one year is too short a period for making a meaningful assessment of AKD's performance. It is like assessing the performance of a student in a two-year study program to complete his GCE (Ordinary Level) examination after one year and telling him that he has failed the exam. All that the examiner can tell the student is whether he is moving in the right direction and if so, how to consolidate it till he passes the full examination and if not, how he should rectify his follies and moving back to the desired path. Political or economic reforms are processes that take time. A midpoint in the process is not an apt stage for assessing the success of a reform program. Hence, it is unfair to brand AKD and his Government a failure at this midpoint.

In this context, what I find is that AKD is moving in the correct direction, but he should come up with a concrete master program to speed up the economic growth, create employment, integrate Sri Lanka with the rest of the world, and alleviate poverty. It is already too late for his Government to embark on this program. It is in this way he could fight poverty, now exacerbated by still high cost of living, as he advised to the rest of the world nations in his maiden speech at the United Nations last week.