POLITICS-SRI LANKA: First Woman Premier’s Death Not to Affect Poll Result – Analysts

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Oct 10 2000 (IPS) - The death of the world’s first woman prime minister Tuesday morning, on the day Sri Lanka chose a new parliament, was not expected to influence the outcome, which would decide her daughter’s ability to bring peace to the nation troubled by ethnic violence.

Political analysts said three-time Sri Lankan premier Sirima Bandaranaike, who died of a heart attack at the age of 84 years after casting her vote in the election, had ceased being a political force some years ago.

Bandaranaike, until August the world’s oldest serving prime minister, was returning from her home constituency of Attanagala, about 40 km from Colombo, when she fell ill and was rushed to a private hospital. She had been ailing for some time and quit as prime minister on health grounds.

Jayadeva Uyangoda, senior lecturer in political science at the Colombo University, said Bandaranaike, mother of Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga, had lost all political influence since her confinement to a wheelchair some years ago.

Political observers did not expect her death to generate any ‘sympathy vote’ for Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance (PA) coalition in the election of the country’s new 225-member parliament.

The PA was said to be running neck and neck with the main opposition United National Party (UNP), with the left-wing People’s Liberation Front, better known by its Sinhalese acronym JVP, a distant third. About 12 million voters over the age of 18 years were eligible to choose from among the 5,477 candidates fielded by 29 political parties and 99 independent groups.

The election was said to be a referendum on Kumaratunga’s bold peace package to end the Tamil Tiger secessionist campaign that has claimed more than 60,000 lives in the last 17 years. This would give Sri Lanka a new constitution, granting sweeping autonomy to the provinces, including the north and east where the rebels want a separate home for the country’s minority Tamil people.

Bandaranaike first became prime minister in 1960, months after her husband and then incumbent prime minister, Solomon Dias Bandaranaike was shot dead by a Buddhist monk. Her husband is believed to have sown the seeds of Tamil estrangement by his policies, which were perceived to favour the majority Sinhala community.

Her husband introduced the ‘Sinhala Only’ policy in 1956, which led to the Sinhalese language being introduced as the national language and the scrapping of English medium classes in public schools.

During her second term as prime minister, from 1970 to 1977, Bandaranaike nationalised tea and rubber plantations and tightened state economic controls. In contrast, her daughter invited back transnational companies booted out by Bandaranaike.

Earlier this year, Kumaratunga also resumed diplomatic ties with Israel, which were snapped by her mother three decades ago.

“She had no impact on the political scene in recent years,” said Jehan Perera, political commentator and media director at the National Peace Council (NPC), a Norwegian-backed non governmental organisation working to promote a peace settlement in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict.

In August, Bandaranaike was replaced as prime minister by Ratnasiri Wikremanayake, at a time when the ruling coalition was looking for someone younger to campaign for the October election.

In her years in office, Bandarnaike inspired not only Sri Lankan women, but women in Asia. “She was a great woman and by taking over from her assassinated husband, as a housewife, she showed the world what Asian women are made of,” said women’s rights campaigner Jezima Ismail.

“She was a non-entity at that time, a shy housewife who was not involved in politics,” Ismail said.

Bandaranaike’s entry into politics was followed by other political widows taking office in South Asian nations, including her own daughter, whose husband Vijaya was assassinated in 1988 by left-wing Sinhalese rebels.

The former prime minister’s biggest moment came when her government staged the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) conference in Colombo in 1976. It was, and remains, the biggest world summit to be held in the country.

Perhaps her last wish was to bring together a family divided by politics. Bandaranaike tried hard to patch up serious differences between Kumaratunga and brother Anura, a UNP leader, but failed. The two have often attacked each other in public.