Sri Lankan Prime Minister Leaves Office

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world’s first woman prime minister, retired Thursday at 84, letting her daughter, the president, appoint a hard-line prime minister in the fight against Tamil separatists.

“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 a letter, ending four decades of political life.

Bandaranaike’s daughter, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, appointed Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka, 67, prime minister in a bid to improve her government’s image, bruised in trying to resolve the struggle with the minority Tamils.

Wickramanayaka believes that Tamil separatists who have fought a 17-year war for independence need to be wiped out and that discussions can be held with more moderate Tamils. The war has killed 62,000 people.

In an interview after being named prime minister, Wickramanayaka said: “Terrorism will have to be wiped out militarily.”

On Tuesday, Kumaratunga fell 12 votes short in her attempt to push a new constitution through Parliament to give Tamils autonomy--but not independence--in the north and east, where most of them live.

The attempt to give autonomy to the Tamils--who are Hindus--angered senior Buddhist monks and the Sinhalese majority. Buddhism is the religion of most Sinhalese, who make up 76% of Sri Lanka’s 18.6 million people.

The prime minister’s post is ceremonial, but it carries political clout with the people.

“Wickramanayaka, who is a Sinhala Buddhist hawk, can blunt some of the criticism by the Sinhalese nationalists,” said Dayan Jayatilaka, a political analyst.

Bandaranaike also pushed the cause of the Sinhalese Buddhist majority during her political career, which included three terms as prime minister.

Born Sirimavo Ratwatte on April 17, 1916, Bandaranaike was a member of one of this island nation’s wealthiest families. In 1940 she married Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, a senior politician in the United National Party that was governing Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon.

Breaking away to form his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party, her husband was elected prime minister in 1956. A deranged Buddhist monk assassinated him three years later.

Bandaranaike was transformed from shy housewife into a political dynamo. She campaigned for her husband’s party in the 1960 elections and became its leader.

She was elected the first woman head of government July 20, 1960, six years before Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister.

In May 1972, Bandaranaike made the country a republic. Parliament expelled her in 1980, accusing her of misusing power while prime minister, and banned her from office for seven years. Her civic rights were restored in 1986.

In 1993, Kumaratunga took over the party’s leadership. Elected president a year later, she appointed her mother prime minister.