12 Facts About Chanaka Amaratunga

Chanaka Amaratunga was the founder of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka.

Chanaka Amaratunga obtained a doctorate from the University of London for a thesis on Iranian relations with the West in the 1950s.

Chanaka Amaratunga was interested in politics from his schooldays, and a firm adherent of the United National Party, the more conservative of the two main Sri Lankan parties.

Chanaka Amaratunga welcomed its overwhelming victory at the 1977 elections, and its reversal, under Junius Richard Jayewardene, of the statist economic policies of the past.

Chanaka Amaratunga established the Council for Liberal Democracy, which was intended to develop a conceptual framework for the reforms which he believed should be taken further.

Chanaka Amaratunga broke conclusively with Jayewardene's UNP when it pushed through a referendum in 1982 to postpone parliamentary elections for six years.

Apart from the damage to democracy, the measure as Chanaka Amaratunga predicted led to opposition going underground, and to severe terrorist activity throughout the country in the late eighties.

In 1987, Chanaka Amaratunga established the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka.

Premadasa began a programme of reforms that brought the country closer to principles Chanaka Amaratunga had enunciated, in particular a competitive open economy that did not depend on state patronage, an independent judiciary, and regular free elections.

Premadasa for his part wooed Chanaka Amaratunga and had signed a pact with the Liberal Party just before he was assassinated in 1993.

Apart from his interest in politics, Chanaka Amaratunga was keenly interested in the arts.

Chanaka Amaratunga was an accomplished actor, as well as being a debater, and had been Secretary and Treasurer of the Oxford Union.