Sirimavo — from shy housewife to world’s first woman-PM

A shy housewife, who stayed in the background during her husband’s premiership, she accepted a call by Solomon’s supporters to head the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) he founded and led it to victory in the July, 1960 elections.

Since then, she has been prime minister of the Indian Ocean-Island three times and led her party through nearly four decades during which it has scored spectacular election victories and suffered stunning defeats.

Following her husband’s policy of nationalisation, Bandaranaike was responsible for taking radical measures which altered the political and economic landscape of Sri Lanka.

She nationalised denominational schools and life insurance and made the language of the majority Sinhalese community the country’s official language.

Bandaranaike’s daughter, Chandrika, is now undoing what her mother did by privatising most of Sri Lanka’s state firms — including the telecommunication utility and the national carrier.

In 1971, less than a year into her second-term, a group of Marxist youths mounted an armed insurrection against Bandaranaike’s government. The uprising was smashed with the help of arms rushed in by friendly countries.

In 1972, Bandaranaike made Sri Lanka a republic, severing the last constitutional links with Britain which had ruled the country for 150 years before granting independence in 1948.

Bandaranaike is remembered well for both her statesmanship and socialist policies during the cold war years that, some say, prompted Sri Lanka’s economic regression.

She adopted major land reforms, restricting land ownership to 50 acres (20 hectares) and placed a ceiling on ownership of property.

She also restricted imports which led to shortages of food, petrol and other essentials and formed long `bread queues’.

While trouble brew at home, Bandaranaike was active on the foreign policy front. She used her influence with both India and China to play a key role in defusing tensions between the two giants after their brief border-war in 1962.

She was also one of the founder-members of the Non-Aligned Movement and later worked very closely with leaders like India’s Indira Gandhi, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito.

Affectionately known as `Mrs B’, she has been the uniting factor within the ruling People’s Alliance, a coalition of parties with varied interests and ideologies that has now ruled Sri Lanka for six years.

President Junius Jayewardene won power in 1977 and replaced the 1972 constitution, assuming unprecedented power as executive president. The prime minister’s role became ceremonial in nature.

Bandaranaike suffered a serious political setback when Jayewardene’s government expelled her from Parliament in 1980 and stripped her of her civic rights for five years.

She was disenfranchised after a special commission found her guilty of abuse of power for continuing a state of emergency for six years. “I was not given a fair trial,” she said.

Bandaranaike made a strong return to politics in 1985 and contested the 1988 presidential elections, which she lost to Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was assassinated, five years later.

She then challenged the result in the Supreme Court saying it was not a fair election, but the court dismissed the petition.

In her later years, Bandaranaike faced rifts over succession as party-leader, with the strongest candidates being her daughter, Chandrika, and son, Anura.

Bandaranaike was said to favour her daughter, leading Anura to quit his mother’s party and join the main opposition, United National Party (UNP).

Ill-health prevented Bandaranaike from campaigning in the August 1994 parliamentary elections in which Chandrika led the party to victory.

A few months later, Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga became Sri Lanka’s first woman-president defeating her nearest rival by a whopping margin.

Bandaranaike became Prime Minister for the third time, but analysts say she played little role in the Government due to ill-health. She has spent most of her last years in a wheel-chair unable to walk.