Issue no.: 6 | January 2010

Making History

Sirimavo Bandaranaike

Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (April 17, 1916 – October 10, 2000) was a Sri Lankan politician and the first female Prime Minister in the world. She served as Prime Minister of Ceylon and Sri Lanka three times, from 1960 to 1965, 1970 to 1977 and 1994 to 2000 and was a long-time leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party.Bandaranaike was the widow of a previous Sri Lankan prime minister, Solomon Bandaranaike and the mother of Sri Lanka's third President,Chandrika Kumaratunga, as well as Anura Bandaranaike, former speaker and cabinet minister.

On her husband Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike's assassination, Bandaranaike took over the leadership of his Sri Lanka Freedom Party kept it for forty years until her death, became a Senator and lead her party to an election victory in 1956. She became prime minister on July 21, 1960 as a member of the Senate and ruled her country on and off throughout the 1960s and 1970s until she was crushingly defeated in a general election in 1977. In 1980, she was expelled from parliament for abuse of power, and banned from public office for seven years.A staunch socialist, Bandaranaike continued her husband's policies of nationalizing key sectors of the economy, such as banking and insurance, and also nationalizing all schools then owned by the Roman Catholic Church in 1961. Unfortunately, she was on a roller-coaster ride from the moment she took office and within a year of her 1960 election victory she declared a state of emergency. This followed a civil disobedience campaign by part of the country's minority Tamil population who were outraged by her decision to drop English as an official language and her order to conduct all government business in Sinhala, the language of the majority Sinhalese. This they considered a highly discriminatory act and an attempt to deny Tamils access to all official posts and the law. This led to an increase in Tamil militancy which escalated under succeeding administrations.Further problems arose with the state takeover of foreign businesses, particularly the petroleum companies, which upset the Americans and the British, who imposed an aid embargo on Sri Lanka. As a result, Bandaranaike moved her country closer to China and the Soviet Union and championed a policy of nonalignment. At home, she crushed an attempted military coup in 1962 by Catholic officers. In 1964, she entered into a historic coalition with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP). At the end of that year, she was defeated on a confidence vote, losing the general election that followed. Six years later she bounced back, her United Front winning a substantial majority in the 1970 elections.

Her second term saw a new Constitution introduced, which ended the country's status as a Commonwealth realm. Ceylon was renamed Sri Lanka and declared a republic. But after just 16 months in power, a left-wing youth uprising almost toppled her government:1971 JVP Insurrection. Sri Lanka's small army was caught off guard due to the lack of early warning since the county's intelligence unit was disbanded by Mrs Bandaranaike fearing it being loyal to the UNP the year before. However the Sri Lanka Army quickly mobilized its reservist and held its ground although some remote areas of the country where occupied by the insurgents. She was saved by her skillful foreign policy when the country's non-aligned friends rushed to her help. In a rare move, both India and Pakistan sent troops to Colombo to aid Bandaranaike in crushing the insurgency by deploying them to guard airports and port, freeing up Sri Lankan service personal for offensives. In those tough political years, she turned herself into a formidable leader. "She was the only man in her cabinet", one of her officials commented during the height of the insurgency.

The 1973 oil crisis had a traumatic effect on the Sri Lankan economy; the government had no access to Western aid and her socialist policies stifled economic activity. Rationing had to be imposed. Bandaranaike became more and more intolerant of criticism and forced the shut-down of the Independent newspaper group, whose publications were her fiercest critics. Earlier she had nationalized the country's largest newspaper, Lake House, which has remained the government's official mouthpiece.Lasantha Wickrematunge was Bandaranaike's secretary and political adviser.