Live discussion on Sri Lanka’s Economy Post Election

Held via Zoom on Thursday, 30 July 2020, in the lead-up to Sri Lanka’s 2020 General Election, this discussion asked each of the country’s major political parties to lay out their actual economic policy platform for the incoming Parliament, rather than campaign rhetoric alone. The panel deliberately spanned the political spectrum: Prof. Ranjith Bandara representing the SLPP, Prof. Ashu Marasinghe for the UNP, Dr. Anil Jayantha Fernando for the NPP, and Dr. Harsha de Silva for the SJB, moderated by COO Dhananath Fernando and Research Executive Sathya Karunarathne, with audience questions taken live via Slido. The format gave viewers a rare side-by-side comparison of how each party’s own economists and representatives would prioritise fiscal policy, debt management, and economic recovery in the aftermath of the election, at a moment when COVID-19 had just delivered a severe shock to an economy already carrying elevated debt. The main highlight was less any single answer than the exercise itself: by putting rival party representatives on the same virtual stage to answer the same questions, Advocata created a direct, comparable record of each party’s proposed economic policies for a “prosperous Sri Lanka” post-election, holding all sides to the same standard of specificity rather than letting any one party’s platform go unexamined.