Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga Madam President (Best President)
Channel: Sathya Soyamu
Date: 2014-03-22

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (Sinhala: චන්ද්‍රිකා බන්ඩාරනායක කුමාරතුංග,Tamil: சந்திரிகா பண்டாரநாயக்க குமாரதுங்க; born 29 June 1945) was the fifth President of Sri Lanka, who served from 12 November 1994 to 19 November 2005. The country's only female president to date, she is the daughter of two former prime ministers and also the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) until the end of 2005.[Born Chandrika Bandaranaike, she comes from an aristocratic family with a long history of socio-political involvement in the country. Her father, S.W.R.D Bandaranaike was a government minister at the time of her birth and later became Prime Minister. He was assassinated in 1959, when Chandrika was fourteen. Chandrika's mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, then became the world's first female prime minister, in 1960. Chandrika's brother, Anura Bandaranaike is a former Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka and a former minister who died in March 2008. Her sister Sunethra Bandaranaike is a well-known philanthropist and runs the Sunera Trust. Their grandfather, Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranike, was the Maha Mudaliyar, the chief Ceylonese representative and advisor to the Governor of Ceylon during British colonial rule.
Chandrika was educated at the St Bridget's Convent, Colombo. In 1965 she entered the Aquinas University College and gained a scholarship to the University of Paris in 1967[citation needed], where she spent five years, graduating from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in political science[citation needed]. She also spent a year at Sciences Po Aix.[3][4] While in Paris she obtained a diploma in Group Leadership from the same university[citation needed]. Her PhD studies in Development Economics at the University of Paris[citation needed] were interrupted when she returned to Sri Lanka to enter politics, when her mother's government had launched a wide-ranging programme of socialist reform and development. During her days in France, Chandrika was active in the Student Revolution of 1968[citation needed]. She is fluent in Sinhala, English and French.[5]
She married film star and Sri Lankan politician, Vijaya Kumaratunga (also Kumaranatunga), in 1978.pon returning to Sri Lanka, she enrolled in and became active in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and, in 1974, became an executive committee member of its Women's League. Following the land reforms in Sri Lanka in 1972--1976, she was the principal director of the Land Reform Commission. From 1976 to 1977, she was chairman of the Janawasa Commission, which established collective farms. From 1976 to 1979, she acted as a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
She stayed active in politics leaving the SLFP and supporting her husband's party, the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party. After Kumaratunga was assassinated[how?], she left the country for the UK, working for World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University in the interim, and not returning until 1991.On return to Sri Lanka she rejoined SLFP and led her party to a historic and decisive victory at the southern provincial council elections. Kumaratunga was elected as the chief minister of the Western Province of Sri Lanka in 1993 in a landslide election victory. Kumaratunga herself was elected prime minister of a People's Alliance (PA) government from 19 August 1994 and won the presidential election held shortly thereafter in November. This ended 17 years of United National Party rule. She appointed her mother to succeed her as prime minister. Early in her term she made conciliatory moves towards the separatist Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in an attempt to end the ongoing civil war. After these overtures failed, she later pursued a more military-based strategy against them.In October 1999, Kumaratunga called an early presidential election.[6]