Some priorities for the new Govt.

If confirmation was ever required, the presidential election of last Saturday further reiterated the fact that cohabitation government just does not work in Sri Lanka. An imitation of the French Gaullist Executive Presidential system, bipartisanship and a National Government of the country's two main political parties -- the UNP and the SLFP -- has not only failed, but the two are fast disintegrating in the process.

From the muddied waters of local politics has emerged the lotus bud, the symbol of the victorious People's Party (SLPP).

The UNP has become a fractious group, seemingly collapsing like a house of cards following last Saturday's election results, the same fate that befell the SLFP in 2015 and led that party to split into two. All things are however transient.

The UNP waving the white flag so early is a repudiation of the more than 5.5 million voters who placed their faith in their candidate. The leaders just left them in the lurch overnight allowing a few cases of post-election violence against their very supporters to take place with no government in place for 48 hours. The 'new' government is now left with a ragtag Opposition, and the danger of seeing the country drift into a one-party state omnipresent.

A priority for the new Administration would be to make the minorities feel one with the country. Any marginalisation could have a detrimental impact. These ethnic and religious minorities voted for two majority Sinhala Buddhist candidates, not for minority candidates from the North or East. Foreign news agencies are trying to make a meal of the voting pattern and stress the need for minority "inclusiveness". It might serve them well to turn the searchlight inward and ask their own governments to practise what they preach.

Setting right the economy would be high on the list of priorities as well. On the cover page of our ST2 section of this edition, a former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India has warned that Sri Lanka's "whopping" debt-to-exports ratio of 270% and non concessional loans, low FDIs and continuing dependence on external financing will be a challenge for the new President. It is as simple as it is stark, he says, to see that Sri Lanka, South Asia's onetime Scandinavia, does not become its Argentina.

That’s a sobering thought now that the milk rice has been consumed and fire crackers lit to welcome a new Executive President.