40 Facts About Chandrika Kumaratunga

Chandrika Kumaratunga led the Sri Lanka Freedom Party from 1994 to 2005.

Chandrika Kumaratunga is the longest-serving president in Sri Lankan history.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was reelected in 1999, defeating UNP candidate and Leader of the Opposition, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was the only son of Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranike, the Maha Mudaliyar, the chief Ceylonese representative and advisor to the Governor of Ceylon.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was born into the prominent Bandaranaike family and spent her early years at their residence in Rosmead Place, Colombo, as well as at Horagolla Walauwa, her family's ancestral home.

Chandrika Kumaratunga made Sinhala the country's only official language, thus marginalizing the Tamils as well as members of the middle-class educated elite whose first language was English.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was assassinated in 1959 when Chandrika was fourteen.

Therefore, Chandrika Kumaratunga was involved in politics from a young age along with her siblings as she was the second of three children in the family.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was educated at the St Bridget's Convent, Colombo, and enrolled at the Roman Catholic Aquinas University College, Colombo to study for a law degree.

Chandrika Kumaratunga thereafter enrolled in a PhD program in development economics at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, where she studied from 1970 to 1973.

Chandrika Kumaratunga returned to Ceylon in 1972, where her mother had become prime minister for the second time in 1970 and launched a wide-ranging programme of socialist reform, and faced a violent communist insurrection in 1971.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was appointed as an Additional Principal Director in the Land Reforms Commission which acquired nearly 228,000 hectares of private land to the state under the Land Reform Law, which imposed a ceiling of twenty hectares on privately owned land.

In 1978, she married Vijaya Chandrika Kumaratunga a leading actor, and LSSP turned SLFP political activist.

Chandrika Kumaratunga supported his election campaign in the by-election in Mahara in 1983, where he lost in the recount.

Chandrika Kumaratunga left the SLFP in 1984 when Vijaya Kumaratunga formed his own party the Sri Lanka Mahajana Pakshaya supporting his political activities against the policies of the mainstream parties.

Chandrika Kumaratunga served as the vice president of the SLMP.

On 16 February 1988, Vijaya Chandrika Kumaratunga was assassinated in front of his home in Narahenpita by gunmen in the presence of his wife.

Chandrika Kumaratunga briefly took over the leadership of her husband's party, and formed the United Socialist Alliance with the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, and the Nava Sama Samaja Party.

Chandrika Kumaratunga succeeded her mother as the leader of the SLFP.

Prime Minister Chandrika Kumaratunga backed by the PA contested against Gamini Dissanayake, who was the leader of the opposition backed by the UNP.

Chandrika Kumaratunga's government continued the open economic policies of the UNP, with an increase in the major revenue earners; the apparel industry, foreign remittances from migrant unskilled labor, and tea exports.

Chandrika Kumaratunga privatized several state corporations such as Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, State Distilleries Corporation, Air Lanka among others which were found to be controversial with Kumaratunga accused of taking large bribes for the sales and years later the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka annulled several such sales.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was fined by the court a sum of three million rupees for unlawful land acquisition and subsequent sale of such land for the Water's Edge development project.

Chandrika Kumaratunga further followed a policy of strong prosecution of UNP, by appointing presidential committees to investigate actions of the UNP tenure and leading members of the opposition personally such as the leader of the opposition, Ranil Wickremasinghe.

Chandrika Kumaratunga thereafter pursued a more military-based strategy against them launching several major offensives such as Operation Riviresa which captured the Jaffna peninsula from the LTTE.

Chandrika Kumaratunga's government, led by Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar increased the recognition and acceptance of Sri Lanka on the international stage, which had been greatly affected by the riots and suppression of insurgency in the 1980s.

Chandrika Kumaratunga succeeded in having the LTTE banned internationally; with the United States and the United Kingdom proscribed the LTTE on 8 October 1997 and 28 February 2001 respectively, thereby depriving that organization of a primary source of funding.

Chandrika Kumaratunga's government re-established formal diplomatic ties with Israel in 2000, which had become a major supplier of weapons to the island.

Chandrika Kumaratunga lost vision in her right eye in an assassination attempt, by the Tamil Tigers, at her final election rally at Colombo Town Hall premises on 18 December 1999.

Chandrika Kumaratunga continued as president of Sri Lanka although her relationship with the Wickremasinghe government was a strained one.

President Chandrika Kumaratunga believed Wickremasinghe was being too lenient towards the LTTE, and in May 2003 she indicated her willingness to sack the prime minister and government if she felt they were making too many concessions to the rebels.

On 4 November 2003, while Prime Minister Wickremasinghe was on an official visit to the US, Chandrika Kumaratunga prorogued Parliament and took over Defense, Interior, and Media ministries herself.

Chandrika Kumaratunga argued that since the 1999 election had been held one year early, she should be allowed to serve that leftover year stating that she had a secret swearing-in for her second term a year after her formal swearing-in.

Chandrika Kumaratunga was listed 25th by Forbes magazine in its "100 most powerful women" in 2005.

Chandrika Kumaratunga is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders and the Global Leadership Foundation.

In November 2009, Chandrika Kumaratunga was appointed to the 12-member board of directors of the Club de Madrid.

On 21 November 2014 Chandrika Kumaratunga formally announced her return to active politics at a press conference held by the country's opposition coalition, following weeks of speculation regarding her involvement in the coalition's decision-making.

Chandrika Kumaratunga successfully endorsed Maithripala Sirisena as the common candidate of the opposition in the 2015 presidential election, who defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Chandrika Kumaratunga coordinated with opposition leaders both in the Maldives and in Sri Lanka bridging trust between the disputing opposition parties to form a coalition.

Chandrika Kumaratunga endorsed Sajith Premadasa for the 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election.