AKD presidency @ 1: Walking the talk or talking the walk?

This week will see President Anura Kumara Dissanayake notch up one year as the ninth Executive President of Sri Lanka. The second youngest to assume the highest office in the land at the age of 55, after Chandrika Kumaratunga, who was 49 when she took office, Dissanayake broke many a barrier when he became president, becoming the first from outside the then two-party political system to lead the country. Unsurprisingly, he was also the first to be elected president on a second count, not obtaining the required ‘fifty per cent plus one’ votes at the first count.

Mr Dissanayake completes his first year as Head of State, Head of Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces in a country which, when he took over, was just recovering from a period of political upheaval with an unprecedented mass uprising baying for the blood of the sitting Executive President at the gates of his official residence—a movement copied since by Bangladeshis and Nepalis. The country was stabilised to some extent from the worst economic crisis it had ever faced with the intervention of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and some judicious lobbying with its lenders, even though his partymen were fond of oft-repeating that they inherited a “bunkoloth ratak” (bankrupt nation).

Read more on the Presidency coloumn at today's Sunday Times edition here