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Lankan alliance marks first year in power today

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's People's Alliance marks its first year in power on Wednesday having failed to deliver on some campaign promises but with widespread approval for a bold plan to solve the country's ethnic war, analysts said on Tuesday.

"It's a mixed bag really," said Arjuna Mahendran, senior analyst at Crosby Securities. "On some fronts, like privatisation, progress has been slow but they've progressed with the liberalisation programme, especially with cuts in import duties."

The alliance's efforts to settle the 12-year ethnic conflict in which it says more than 50,000 people have died was "a potential plus, with investors instead of writing Sri Lanka off, adopting a wait-and-see attitude", he added.

President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga has failed to abolish the executive presidency by her own deadline of July 15 or to provide benefits for the unemployed as promised in the election campaign.

"On the two key issues of democracy and the ethnic conflict the alliance has fulfilled or sought to fulfill its promises," said political analyst Ram Manikkalingam. "There's simply no doubt today that there's much deeper democracy in Sri Lanka than in the last 17 years."

The government failed to meet some promises, like unemploment benefits, because it had "not been able to reap the peace dividend which they over-optimistically hoped to reap in the first few months of coming to power", he said.-Reuter