A domestic dispensation

Chandrika Kumaratunga served eleven years as Executive President. For the first five years she had a secure parliamentary majority and was in undisputed control of the country. During this period she kept the economy on a course of steady if limited growth, and continued to open it up, albeit on foundations laid by Premadasa. Thus plantations, handed over previously to private sector management, were privatized during her tenure. Again, the rapid opening up of the telecommunications sector followed the initial enforcement of competition during Premadasa's regime.

The credit she received for this achievement, all the more remarkable in that the more senior ministers of her cabinet still had a predilection for old fashioned socialism, was limited. One reason for this is that, even during her first tenure in office, the ethnic problem became more complex, and the separatist Tigers far more powerful. In addition, her managerial skills were weak, and her dependence on cronies, many of them selected with little regard for ability, increased over the years.

This was a problem endemic to the SLFP. Ever since Bandaranaike was abandoned, shortly before the 1956 election, by the most able of his allies, the SLFP had been lacking in talent at the top, and had generally had to bring in capable administrators from elsewhere. Bandaranaike himself had presided over a coalition which included former Marxists, a situation that led to dissension even before his death.