|
|
Change Your Life! |
Prime Minister mom quits for President daughter |
|||
|
News
|
||||
August 11, 2000
COLOMBO (AP) - Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister, retired Thursday at 84 to allow her embattled daughter, the president, to reorganize the Cabinet ahead of elections. Bandaranaike has been a dominant force in Sri Lankan politics for four decades but has been in ill health for months and unable to make public appearances. President Chandrika Kumaratunga faces crucial elections in coming months after failing to push through Parliament a new constitution that would have granted autonomy to regions where most of the Tamil minority live. She hoped it would sideline the rebels who have fought 17 years for independence in a war that has killed more than 62,000 people. A stunned Parliament was told that Bandaranaike had been replaced by Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka, 67, minister of public administration and home affairs, who has strong links to powerful monks in the predominantly Buddhist country. The monks and many Sinhalese nationalists opposed the constitution and Kumaratunga suffered political damage in the first effort by a government to legally address minority grievances. In her resignation letter, Bandaranaike said she was stepping down to allow the president "to appoint a suitable person" who could actively campaign. "I believe it is time for me to quietly withdraw from the humdrum of busy political life, to a more tranquil and quiet environment," Bandaranaike said in her letter. When Kumaratunga became president in November 1994, she appointed her mother, Bandaranaike, to the prime minister's post, which has few administrative duties but carries influence with the people and political clout.
It was Bandaranaike's third time in the job. When she held it twice before, she was running the country, but the duties changed in the 1980s when Sri Lanka adopted a French-type system with a powerful president. Born Sirimavo Ratwatte on April 17, 1916 into one of the Indian Ocean island's wealthiest families, she was educated in a Catholic convent and never intended to become a politician. In 1940 she married Soloman Dias Bandaranaike, a senior politician in the United National Party that was governing the soon-to-be independent country, then called Ceylon. After breaking away to form his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Bandaranaike was elected prime minister in 1956. A deranged Buddhist monk assassinated him three years later. After a period of mourning, Bandaranaike transformed from a shy housewife to campaign for her husband's party in the 1960 elections and became party leader in May. The election of a woman head of government was so unusual on July 20, 1960 that newspapers weren't sure what to call her. "There will be need for a new word. Presumably, we shall have to call her a Stateswoman," London's Evening News wrote on July 21. "This is the suffragette's dream come true. It is strange to think it has happened in a comparatively youthful democracy and in Asia, where woman's status often means bondage." At the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in London in March 1961, when South Africa was expelled because of its apartheid policy, Bandaranaike was the first woman to sit at the conference table among some of the world's most eminent statesmen. She made history in September 1961 at the Neutral Summit Talks in Belgrade, Yugoslavia as the first national leader to speak "as a woman and a mother." She governed until 1965, lost the next elections, then regained power in 1970. "She knew her priorities very well and had a foresight," said Jehan Perera, a Sri Lankan political analyst. "She knew keeping good relations with big neighbor India was very crucial for a small country like ours." Despite her wealth and her party's rightist tradition of championing the causes of the majority Sinhalese Buddhist community, Bandaranaike began shifting toward leftist policies. She became influenced by strong personal ties with China and neighboring India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "She and the late Mrs. Gandhi had a personal rapport. Both had some similarities, like losing their husbands at young age and coming from top class families," Perera said. Bandaranaike ordered the U.S. Peace Corps and the Asia Foundation out of the country in 1970 and closed the Israeli Embassy. Only this year, when her daughter needed weapons and planes quickly to fight separatist Tamil rebels in the north, did Sri Lanka restore diplomatic relations with Israel. In May 1972 Bandaranaike made the country a republic. In her second term, she nationalized private companies and church schools and made Sinhalese the national language. Imports were banned and many Sri Lankans still remember the long queues for bread and rationing of basic necessities such as rice and cloth. She used the military to ruthlessly crush a 1971 insurrection by Marxist rebels. Estimates of the number of people killed range up to 20,000. The small Marxist parties who were part of her coalition government began to desert her. Her unpopularity grew with the nationalization of the country's largest newspaper groups and the closing down of an independent newspaper company. She then postponed elections for two years. When they were finally held in 1977, her party was reduced to a mere eight seats in the 157-member Parliament, down from 90 in 1970. Bandaranaike managed to win her own seat from her hometown, Attanagalla, 35 kilometers (22 miles) northeast of Colombo. But in 1980, Parliament expelled her, accusing her of misusing power while prime minister, and banned her from public office for seven years. |
