DRAWING PARALLELS
‘Fever pitch’ best describes the pulse of the people during the countdown to the presidential election in September with the temperature dropping to near normal two months later when Sri Lankans voted again at the general election.
To put this in perspective, the voter turnout of 13.6 million for the presidential poll plummeted to 11.8 million at the parliamentary election – for one reason or the other.
The fever has now subsided and seemingly been replaced by a sense of euphoria, a phenomenon that has ominous parallels.
Business confidence is at a five year high – it is as high as in the aftermath of the November 2019 presidential election. The stock market has reached new highs – again, like it did five years ago. And there’s a sense of guarded optimism about the economy and sales volumes, which was the case at the end of 2019.
On the inflation front, we are now in negative territory (2.1% deflation in November) compared to 4.5 percent at the beginning of 2020. Between then and now, we were confronted by an all-time high rate of inflation of 67 percent at the height of the economic crisis back in September 2022.
And there’s hope that the promise of stopping the spread of corruption will come true – for the first time in living memory!
Ironically, the new government was voted into power by a massive majority of nearly 6.9 million, which was the scale of victory registered five years ago.
And on the anxiety scale, there are unbearably high taxes across the board, the cost of living continues to be high (despite disinflation), poverty remains a trap that shows no signs of abating, the brain drain has yet to subside and the prospect of servicing high levels of debt continues to make one wonder whether Sri Lanka is out of the woods.
Only time will tell… as the year of hope unfolds.