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World's first female prime minister dies of heart attack

Dienstag, 10. Oktober 2000 / 14:42 Uhr

Colombo - Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who 40 years ago became the world's first female prime minister, died of a heart attack Tuesday after voting in Sri Lanka's parliamentary elections. She was 84.

Bandaranaike regained the office for a third time in 1994. But she retired in August to let her daughter, President Chandrika Kumaratunga, appoint a hard-liner to help with the government's 17-year fight against Tamil separatists ahead of the elections. Bandaranaike voted in her hometown of Attanagalla, 35 kilometers (22 miles) east of Colombo, and suffered a heart attack in her car on her way home, said government spokeswoman Kusum Rodrigo. She was pronounced dead after being taken to a nursing home. "I think the entire nation has lost its mother," said Alavi Mowlana, a government minister for local affairs. "I cannot believe that she is no more." The day also marked the widow's 60th wedding anniversary. A state funeral will be held Saturday at her ancestral home, Horagolla, Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayaka told a news conference after polls closed Tuesday. Wickramanayaka read excerpts from Bandaranaike's last wishes, in which she said she wanted to be buried next to her husband at Horagolla instead of cremated. "I would like to see the completion of the children's hospital in Kandy," she wrote, referring to a district in central Sri Lanka. "In place of floral tributes, I would like the people to contribute to the hospital fund." Wickramanayaka said the government had declared Friday and Saturday days of mourning and ordered the closure of all cinemas, liquor stores, bars and butcheries. He called on citizens to put up white flags to symbolize mourning. Bandaranaike resigned on Aug. 10, suffering from diabetes and other ailments. She told the nation that her daughter needed someone more capable of pushing proposals to end the civil war, which has claimed some 63,000 lives since 1983. "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 upon her retirement, ending four decades of political life. She was elected the first woman head of government on July 20, 1960, six years before Indira Gandhi became India's first woman prime minister. Born Sirimavo Ratwatte on April 17, 1916, Bandaranaike (pronounced bahn-duh-ruh-NY'-kuh) was a member of one of this Indian Ocean island's wealthiest families. In 1940, she married Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, a senior politician in the United National Party, which was governing what was then called Ceylon. Her husband later broke away to form his own Sri Lanka Freedom Party and 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 became the first woman head of government when she won elections July 20, 1960. Her election was so unusual that newspapers were unsure what to call her. "There will be need for a new word. Presumably, we shall have to call her a Stateswoman," London's Evening News wrote July 21. "This is the suffragette's dream come true." In September 1961 at the Neutral Summit Talks in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, she made history by being the first leader to say she was speaking "as a woman and a mother." Bandaranaike governed until 1965, lost the next elections, then regained power in 1970. She kept a strong personal rapport with Indira Gandhi, both of whom had lost their husbands at a young age and came from upper-class families. Shifting toward the left, Bandaranaike ordered the United States Peace Corps out in 1970 and closed the Israeli Embassy. In May 1972, Bandaranaike made the country a republic. During her second term, she nationalized private companies and banned imports. She used the military to crush a 1971 insurrection by Marxist rebels, and up to 20,000 were believed to have died. Parliament expelled her in 1980, accusing her of misusing power, and banning her from office for seven years. Her civic rights were restored in 1986, and she narrowly lost the election for the new, more powerful post of president in 1988.
Suffering from diabetes and a knee problem that put her in a wheelchair, Bandaranaike reduced her political activities. In 1993, Kumaratunga took over the party's leadership. When elected president a year later, she appointed her mother as prime minister, a position that has become largely ceremonial.
Bandaranaike is survived by three children: Kumaratunga; Anura Bandaranaike, a senior opposition candidate; and Senethra Bandaranaike, a philanthropist who is not involved in politics. (news.ch)