7 UP, AND HAPPY B'DAY TOMORROW

The seven year presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, fifth Executive President of Sri Lanka, will be grist to the mill of a competent historian, but in the interregnum, it is important that we make an assessment on this landmark occasion of the completion of what can be called -- without being flippant --'the lucky seven.'

But it was anything but luck that helped the President deliver in excess of expectations -- with the ending of the long running armed conflict with the terrorist LTTE, being the piece de resistance in his presidential CV.

'In excess of expectations' is not cliche. The President came in initially with a wafer thin majority, and therefore, technically, with a wafer thin mandate.

But then, after he was successful in delivering the war victory, his second-term triumph was so conspicuously substantial that riding on his saataka, his coalition managed a whooping near two-thirds majority in Parliament, something that had been guaranteed as 'impossible' by the author of the 1978 constitution, J. R. Jayewardene.

This is a measure of the extent of President Rajapaksa's success; historians will have to say that it wasn't hyperbole when commentators of the day stated that he delivered beyond what was expected of him initially by the electorate, and even his party, some sections of which incidentally extended lukewarm support when he first ran for President.

Ending the war delivered a peace dividend, but it was important that after the dust had settled on the battles-past, that there should be full closure, particularly in terms of the irritants that were the cause for the tears in the social fabric.

It's in this area that his greater success is apparent. After the war, the President has made foreign policy gains while not compromising the interests of the nation, which is a mammoth task considering the contradictions involved. On the one hand he was determined not to undermine the war victory by compromising the Armed Forces for example. But on the other, misled sections of the international community were asking for unreasonable, virtually retributive action against these same soldiers and sailors of battle the President had said he would die for.

He then walked the tightrope, and delivered, winning friends in the most difficult of places.

This has now laid the groundwork for massive investment in infrastructure, and an unprecedented leap forward in consolidating economic gains. We are progressing towards an upper-middle economy, and this has caused extreme jealously among some sections of the opposition, which used the terminology to make pathetically unkind comments in Parliament recently!

For the most part, the criticism against the seven year record comes from the same people that did not want the war to stop. Chief among them are those piqued pipers of pessimism and nattering nabobs of negativism in the NGO sector, and of course those desperate sections of the political opposition.

The other thing about the Rajapaksa record is that almost on everything that the President delivered on, the bets were made against him. The pundits said the war could never be ended - and then once proven wrong on that, they said he could never recoup the finances spent, and get the economy revving again because at the end of the war we barely had money for a month of imports.

That situation was turned around. The foreign policy 'crisis' that was blown out of proportion after Geneva in March, was also turned around.

As the External Affairs Minister has observed in Parliament, some of these same countries that hectored us are now sending back Sri Lankans because they are certain that this is a safe country, and a country of reasonable economic opportunity, even for the most disadvantaged.

As expected, now when all lines of attack have failed, the desperate are saying he would be unable to deliver on the promised economic miracle. They can barely acknowledge that the delivery on that is halfway accomplished.

Take tourism for instance -- the world's biggest hospitality franchises are here, and some thriving hotels are being razed to the ground to make way for bigger seven star establishments in their place! The President needs no better birthday present than that kind of news.