The People’s Alliance Government celebrates its fourth anniversary today with neither bugles nor trumpets - at least up to the time this is being written. Perhaps the Lake House Sunday papers may sound a hallelujah today. That remains to be seen. Whispers from the Beira banks on Friday was that Daily News readers were spared a supplement on the subject because the advertising department did not give the editorial department sufficient notice. A convulsion, some journalists said, is in the offing as a result.

No matter. But there are no meetings, posters, congratulatory back patting and other self- adulatory antics that are usually the order of the day on these occasions. Most Lankans will not be overly surprised. While members of the government and its favoured supporters who have been at the receiving end of the patronage pork barrel are all well fed and prosperous, Citizen Perera and his wife have little enough to cheer about. They, after all, have neither per diem nor credit card to eat lavishly, spend lavishly and entertain lavishly as we have heard one particular minister does when he is abroad.

What, after all, is there for the government to celebrate? The third anniversary of the self-imposed deadline to abolish the executive presidency is past. We have had all kinds of excuses on why this promise has not been kept. Prof. G.L. Pieris has piously explained over and over again that such changes cannot be done piecemeal and that the abolition of the executive presidency must be a part of the much vaunted constitutional package. Although we heard so much about that package and were treated to broad hints about "revolutionary" strategy if the UNP does not give it the required two thirds majority, there’s been a deafening silence on that subject for some time now.

Given the hung parliament with the government surviving by the grace of the Tamil parties and the CWC which even secured Mr. Thondaman’s seat via the UNP national list, the executive presidency at least is an assurance of stability. If the UNP were better tacticians and they seriously wanted the executive presidential system they installed scuttled, they had a heaven sent opportunity four years ago. When they were pipped at the post by the PA, President Wijetunge was still incumbent at Janadhipathi Mandiraya and it was he who had to decide whom to call to form the new government.

Some strategists had suggested that Mrs. Kumaratunga be assured of the necessary two thirds majority to abolish the presidency so that the October election on which she triumphantly rode to power would have been unnecessary. Otherwise, they had said, President Wijetunge in the first instance should call upon Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, who after all was leader of both the SLFP and the People’s Alliance, to form the new government. The cat then would surely have been among the pigeons.

But Mr. Gamini Dissanayake was confident of winning a presidential election he did not even live to contest. Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga was called upon to form the government, holding the prime ministry briefly until she comfortably wrapped-up the presidency a couple of months later with a written undertaking that she would abolish the executive presidency by July 15, 1995. But she has continued until now and even offered to have another presidential election this November! But there is no talk of that since the initial flourish.

Given the war situation and the LTTE terror, Sri Lanka should be glad of the stability that the executive presidency affords. The peace that President Kumaratunga promised was illusory. It vanished all too soon with the LTTE, that this government made the mistake of trusting even after President Premadasa’s horrific experience, doing exactly what it had done before. The various deadlines for finishing the war have come and gone. The cost of living keeps rising and unemployment would have been worse than it is if the war machine is not gobbling up so many of our young village youth.

Given the external shocks, the economy would surely have been in worse shape but for the open economic policies President Kumaratunga continues despite the leftist baggage in her ruling alliance. Even the promise of not using emergency law to postpone elections, solemnly published in its policy statement as we pointed out last week, has not been kept. The government, therefore, has little enough to celebrate except that it has now enjoyed the spoils of office for four long years. And the country, unfortunately, has little enough to look forward to given that a change of incumbents in the seats of power will only mean new faces and the old story.