In a probing interview on her YouTube channel ‘Conversations with Alanki’, Alanki Kishani Perera recently asked Senior Presidential Adviser on Economic Affairs Duminda Hulangamuwa a series of pertinent and timely questions. To which the answers, while polite and politic, were not always as perspicacious as one would have hoped for at that level.
Yet, the most revealing aspect of the conversation lies not in any single answer. Rather, it is the cumulative impression left behind by the interview as a whole.
For all the ideological battles that preceded the elections of 2024, and despite years of rhetoric positioning itself against the economic orthodoxy of successive administrations, the National People’s Power (NPP) today seems to be governing from a place that is remarkably close to the economic centre.
That may be the most important political story in Sri Lanka’s socioeconomic life today.
The movement that rose to prominence as a vehicle of protest increasingly sounds like a Government of pragmatists. And the revolution, it would seem, has become managerial. Good thing too.