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Ratnasiri Wickremanayake

Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, the hawkish Minister of Buddhist Affairs and Deputy Minister of Defense in former President Kumaratunga's cabinet, was appointed Prime Minister on 21 November 2005, two days after newly-elected President Mahinda Rajapakse took office. Rajapakse chose Wickremanayake over D.M. Jayaratne, the SLFP General Secretary and Minister of Posts and Telecommunication, and Ports Minister and fellow southerner Mangala Samaraweera, both of whom were rumored to be in the running. It may be that naming a Sinhalese hard-liner to the largely ceremonial PM slot is President Rajapakse's way of throwing a bone to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna.

The appointment of a Buddhist hard-liner as Prime Minister, on the heels of the election of a president allied with Sinhalese chauvinists, would seem to work against Rajapakse's stated intent to move forward on the peace process. The LTTE almost certainly will take a dim view on his appointment. Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, a Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) hard-liner and long-time loyalist of former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, is a controversial politician unlikely to foster the broad consensus new President Mahinda Rajapakse, with his narrow margin of victory, needed to run the country. The selection of a Prime Minister who is even less moderate than the new President is sure to raise anxiety in the country's religious and ethnic minority communities.

Wickremanayake had a reputation in diplomatic and journalism circles for saber-rattling and provocative statements, with diplomats finding Wickremanayake uncommunicative and difficult to deal with. He had taken a hard-line approach to religious legislation; in June 2005, he went behind former President Chandrika Kumaratunga's back to gazette an anti-conversion bill in Parliament. His attempt to push the bill contradicted what he had promised Kumaratunga (REFTEL) but was consistent with his habit of freelancing when Kumaratunga was away from Colombo. When Kumaratunga was out of the country in mid-2004 and he was acting Defense Minister, he made several statements to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) threatening a return to war. During his first tenure as Prime Minister in 2001, he announced at a Buddhist ceremony that Sri Lankans should concentrate on having more children in order to provide more recruits for the army in its fight against the separatist Tamils.

Wickremanayake was a longtime Kumaratunga loyalist in spite of his tendency to pursue his own agenda. Taking a cue from the former President when she turned a cold shoulder toward Rajapakse's presidential campaign, Wickremanayake refused to speak in support of Rajapakse's nomination at the SLFP's first official election rally in Colombo on September 20. Karu Jayasuriya, Deputy Leader of the opposition United National Party (UNP), told poloff in a meeting several months before the election that Wickremanayake was a puppet on whom Kumaratunga could count to do her bidding. Jayasuriya noted that Kumaratunga did not view Wickremanayake as a threat to her dynastic ambitions for her children, the opposite of how she regarded Rajapakse.

Wickremanayake was born on May 5, 1933. He received his secondary education at Dharmapala Vidyalaya in Pannipitiya and Ananda College in Colombo before traveling to London in 1955 to study law at Lincoln's Inn. He passed the first part of the Barrister's examination but returned to Sri Lanka in 1959, one month before he was to sit for the final exam. Wickremanayake entered Parliament in 1960 as a member of the left-leaning Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP, or People's United Front), representing the Horana electorate of Kalutara district, in the Western province. He joined the SLFP in 1962 and successfully contested the Horana electorate in the 1965 and 1970 parliamentary elections. He was Minister of Plantation Industries and Deputy Minister of Justice between 1975-77. He became one-time General Secretary of the SLFP after the party's defeat in the 1977

Wickremanayake's career was closely linked to Kumaratunga's rising political star during the subsequent period of UNP rule. He followed her when she split from her mother's party in the early 1980s to form the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party with her husband. He followed her again when she returned to the SLFP, serving as Minister of Agriculture, Provincial Administration, and Cooperatives in Kumaratunga's provincial cabinet when she was Chief Minister of the Western province. Wickremanayake returned to Parliament after a 17-year absence following a strong showing in the 1994 election, in which he secured the highest number of votes in his home district of Kalutara.

Then-President Kumaratunga gave him the portfolios of Public Administration, Plantation Industries, Parliamentary Affairs, and Home Affairs. She also appointed him Leader of the House. He served as Prime Minister between August 2000 and December 2001, concurrently holding the portfolios of Buddhist Affairs and Plantation Industries. He became leader of the opposition in December 2001 and returned to Parliament as a national list MP in April 2004. He was Minister of Buddhist Affairs; Minister of Public Security, Law and Order; Minister of Agriculture; and Deputy Minister of Defense in the SLFP-led government. Wickremanayake and his wife, Kusum, have three grown children--two sons and a daughter. He speaks English fluently.