Sri Lanka executive presidency opposed by 70-pct: Poll

ECONOMYNEXT – Around 70 percent of respondents to a nation-wide survey had opposed the executive presidency, a poll by Verete Research, a Colombo-based think tank said.

Only 15 percent favoured the continuation of the executive presidency. The 15 percent had several opinions such as reducing powers instead of abolishing it, the report said.

Sri Lanka brought in a powerful executive presidency after the severe trade and exchange controls in amid the forex shortages of the 1970s.

Sri Lanka closed the entire economy in the 1970s as the Bretton Woods system of soft-pegs collapsed and the central bank became the top owner of Treasury bills.

The central bank continued to print money in the 1980s and also started depreciating the currency according to what Anglo-Saxon Mercantilists called the BBC (Basket Band Crawl) policy in the 1980s and was called REER targeting in the past 5 years after even more Treasury bills were bought and the country defaulted.

The distribution of opinion was very similar across all age groups, Verete said.

The Southern, Eastern and Northern Provinces had a similar distribution of opinion – with over 80 percent (+/- 2 percent) saying the executive presidency should be abolished.