Ranasinghe Premadasa was one of the most inscrutable and dynamic statesmen of our time whose services to the nation and the people surpasses that of any leader to date. He was a remarkable personality, a man of strong character who was hounded by his peers for his humble origins from both within his party and the opposition.
Beginning his political career two years after independence in 1948, Ranasinghe Premadasa became a Labour Party member of the Colombo Municipal Council and later, deputy Mayor. He joined the United National Party (UNP) in 1956 and impressed party leaders with his no-nonsense ability to get things done with smooth efficiency. Four years later he won a seat in Parliament and was named a minister when his party formed the next Government. He was appointed a Cabinet Minister when the UNP held power in the late 60s. He subsequently became the chief opposition whip after the re-election of Sirimavo Bandaranaike as Prime Minister in 1970.
Premadasa was appointed Minister of Local Government, Housing and Construction when Junius Richard Jayewardene won the 1977 general election and the following year took on the added responsibility of Prime Minister when Jayewardene created a bastardized presidential form of government. It was Premadasa's continuing position as housing minister that largely fortified his political support. He made a determined effort to provide universal housing and was astute enough to be sure that his photograph was given equal prominence to that of the President in all of the subsequent publicity.
As Prime Minister, starting in 1978 and after becoming President in 1989, Premadasa worked tirelessly to alleviate poverty in Sri Lanka. Among his pet projects was the building of model villages with clean water, decent roads, schools and health centres. He also encouraged the establishment of small-scale industries, mostly garment-related, in neglected backwoods locales by providing factory owners low-interest loans and a share in textile quotas for the United States and Europe.
Potential challengers
His opponents charged that coupled with this seeming concern for the impoverished masses was a political ruthlessness that saw potential challengers expunged from his party. His devotees insisted that his iron-fisted stance was a necessary element for his own survival and that of the nation. They contend it also served him admirably when quelling an armed insurrection by Sinhala militants in the south and in his endeavours to strike a political deal with the Tamil Tiger terrorists.
For several years many considered Premadasa as Jayewardene’s heir apparent, despite his humble non-patrician roots. The UNP’s J. R. Jayewardene and the SLFP’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike both belonged to the same Anglicised elite in Colombo, as did many of the leading ministers in both these major political parties. Highly popular, capable and hardworking, Premadasa displayed a common touch that Jayewardene and most of the party’s elite upper-class lacked and had proved himself a major vote-getter for the party. Unsurprisingly, many of the party’s aristocratic political heavyweights were chagrined that Jayewardene held Premadasa’s political skills in high regard. It was obvious that Jayewardene depended on his Prime Minister to a great extent and worked closely with him.
The attitude of many largely princely Sinhalese UNP leaders towards Premadasa was condescending and distant. Yet they had to admit that he was a vital political weapon for the UNP against their socialist opponents, because he had been so successful in building his own massive political power-base. As such, it was impossible to prevent him from eventually attaining the highest rungs of political power in his own right.
To be sure, he displayed unprecedented temerity to keep even his ruling party and Cabinet colleagues in line. Cracking the whip he made every endeavour to establish total control over the entire shebang. Soon after being installed as Executive President he prohibited Cabinet ministers their earlier concession of choosing their own senior civil servants for their ministries. He even went to the extent of sidelining politicians in favour of trusted senior civil servants in the decision-making process. Even his fiercest detractors at the time had to admit that he was head and shoulders above his former Cabinet colleagues as a workaholic and perceptive leader. During his tenure as President not once did he leave the country for whatsoever purpose. The same rule was applied to his ministers who were forbidden gallivanting on foreign junkets. They were kept firmly grounded and on a tight leash, a constraint at which they chafed and fumed and which eventually prompted some of them to conspire to impeach him.
Economic reforms
As president, Premadasa’s first task was to put down the revolt among the Sinhalese majority by the Janata Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), whose terrorism nearly brought Sri Lanka to a standstill in 1989. He then took over the market-based economic reforms initiated by his predecessor Jayewardene, but at the same time conspicuously redirected state resources towards the rural poor instead of the Colombo population. After his demise Sri Lanka faced a period of drift in policymaking. On the economic side, Premadasa carried out sweeping reforms, privatising much of the flabby, failing public sector, cutting back a huge budget deficit and lining up private investment. At the same time, he balanced this with a populist programme of social engineering to alleviate rural poverty.
International lenders and aid donors claimed that more was needed to be done in cutting back the state sector and bringing inflation under control. Yet a weaker, less politically adept leader would never have been be able to sell such measures to the country as Premadasa did, especially with colleagues clamouring for election-winning handouts.
Premadasa was also a gifted orator who possessed the facility to speak at length in all three languages.
Without a doubt, some of his speeches were fiery and could be abrasive when the situation warranted. Of course, he had more than his share of detractors such as Ronnie de Mel, a former Finance Minister in his Cabinet who defected to Sirimavo Bandaranaike's party. Minister De Mel derogatorily called him ‘'a Tammany Hall politician.'’ Tammany Hall was a New York City political organisation that endured for nearly two centuries. Although its popularity stemmed from a willingness to help the city's poor and immigrant populations, Tammany Hall became known for charges of corruption levelled against its leaders.
At a Colombo May Day rally Premadasa boldly endeared himself to the concourse saying: “I am the servant of the people. They are my masters. It is the people of this country who could tell me what to do. No one else.” Coming from any other political leader in Sri Lanka, that statement would have been written off as pure political rhetoric. But in the short period he had been in power, Premadasa had rapidly acquired a reputation for being tough, independent and very much his own man.
Even his fiercest critics had to concede that the man was an absolute stickler for discipline who would not stomach tardiness in any form.
Emblem of sheer resilience
His long-time Media Secretary the late Evans Cooray had this to say of him in this regard: “He was never one minute late for an appointment, nor a minute early. Sharp at 7 am he called all of us to his room upstairs adjacent to his bedroom. His instructions to us were short and precise, giving the impression of a military field commander who knew what he was about and as always, though cordial, his voice rang with authority and power, commanding compliance.”
Decades later, the country’s present President Maithripala Sirisena, an opposition member of parliament during Premadasa’s tenure as Head of State, paid him the highest tribute at a commemoration of the late President on May 1, 2015 with these words: “The political character of President Ranasinghe Premadasa is an example to the present politicos.”
Ranasinghe Premadasa ran the gauntlet of seemingly insurmountable odds because his ascension to the top was without the patronage of powerful genealogical connections. Yet, his imperious spirit and indomitable will spurred him on to storm the local political area, progressively hold key ministerial portfolios and eventually succeed in being elected to the highest office in the land. To his disparagers he was an upstart, ambitiously battling his way among entrenched elitist political forces. To his adherents he was an emblem of sheer resilience whose nobility of character far exceeded the appeal of his upper-crust peers.
A pity we will never see his like again!
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