Ranasinghe Premadasa

Sri Lankabhimanya Ranasinghe Premadasa (රණසිංහ ප්‍රේමදාස Raṇasiṃha Premadāsa; ரணசிங்க பிரேமதாசா Raṇaciṅka Pirēmatācā; 23 June 1924 – 1 May 1993) was the third President of Sri Lanka from 2 January 1989 to his assassination in 1993.

Ranasinghe Premadasa was born on 23 June 1924 at Dias Place, Colombo 11, to the family of Richard Ranasinghe (Ranasinghe Mudalali) of Kosgoda and Battuwita Jayasinghe Arachchige Ensina Hamine of Batuwita, Horana.

Premadasa was the oldest of five children, three sisters, and one brother.

His father was engaged in the transport business in Colombo employing rickshaws.

He received his early education at the Purwarama temple under Ven.

Welitara Sri Pannananda and secondary education at Lorenz College, Skinner's Road, South Maradana and at Saint Joseph's College, Colombo under Rector Fr. Le Goc.

At age fifteen, Premadasa started the Sucharita Children's Society, which later became the Sucharitha Movement, a volunteers organisation with the objectives of uplifting the economic, social and spiritual development of the low-income people living in shanty areas of the capital.

He was the full-time organizer of the community development project in the area in 1939.

These youth who enrolled in his development movement refrained from taking liquor and avoided smoking and gambling.

Premadasa too was a teetotaler.

Allying with A. E. Goonesinghe, the founder leader of the Ceylon Labour movement, Premadasa started his political career in 1946 joining the Ceylon Labour Party as a full-time member and campaigned for Goonesinghe in the 1947 general election.

In 1950, he was elected to the Colombo Municipal Council as a member of San Sebastian's Ward.

Having realized limited future prospects in the Labour Party in the mid-1950s, he supported Sir John Kotelawala's move to remove LSSP Mayor of Colombo, Dr N. M. Perera.

In 1955, he succeeded T. Rudra as Deputy Mayor and joined the United National Party in 1956 following the successful removal of Dr N. M. Perera as Mayor of Colombo in February 1956.

From the United National Party, Premadasa contested the 1956 general election from the Ruwanwella electorate and lost to Dr N. M. Perera.

Following his defeat, he joined J. R. Jayewardene working for the party reorganization under Dudley Senanayake and served as the secretary of the Religious Affairs Committee of the Buddhist Council appointed by the government to organize the 2500th Buddha Jayanthi celebrations.

The following year he joined the protest march to Kandy on 3 October, which had been organized by J. R. Jayewardene.

This march was disrupted at Imbulgoda by thugs led by S. D. Bandaranayake.

He was elected the third Member of Parliament from Colombo Central in the March 1960 general election.

The short-lived Dudley Senanayake government fell in three months and in the July 1960 general election that followed he polled fourth in the three-member constituency of Colombo Central.

In 1961, he re-entered the Colombo Municipal Council having been elected from the Cinnamon Gardens Ward and served till 1965.

During this time he worked to open pre-schools for poor families and initiated vocational training centres in sewing and tailoring for the youth.

He successfully contested the Colombo Central electorate in the 1965 general election and was elected to parliament, he was appointed Chief Government Whip and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Local Government, M. Tiruchelvam.

Premadasa turned Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia, into a public corporation – the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation on 5 January 1967.

When Tiruchelvam resigned in 1968, after the Federal Party left Dudley Senanayake's government, Premadasa was promoted as Minister of Local Government and became a member of Senanayake's cabinet.

During his tenure, he instituted a bridges programme using pre-stressed concrete components, created the Maligawatta Housing Scheme and became known in the local governments in the island.

In the following 1970 general election, he was elected first Member of Parliament for Colombo Central and sat in the opposition with J.R. Jayewardene, the Leader of the Opposition.

Premadasa was appointed Chief Opposition Whip.

Further, he was elected chairman of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth Inter-Parliamentary Association held in Australia.

In the meantime, he was a member of the Constituent Assembly which drafted the constitution of 1972.

Premadasa called for reforms of the party, which Senanayake refused resulting in Premadasa resigning from the party working committee.

He went on to form the Samastha Lanka Puravesi Peramuna, known generally as the Puravesi Peramuna or Citizens Front.

Building up the Citizens Front, he was in open conflict with Senanayake who had recently healed a rift with Jayawardane.

Amidst this conflict, Dudley Senanayake died on 13 April 1973 following a heart attack and Senanayake loyalists found fault with Premadasa.

Jayawardane who became party leader came to terms with Premadasa, who stopped the Citizens Front and return to fully support the United National Party driving up its membership at grassroot levels and becoming its deputy leader.

Premadasa was re-elected as the first member of parliament for Colombo Central in the general election in 1977 and was appointed the Leader of the House and the Minister of Local Government, Housing and Construction.

Before that, he served as the Prime minister of Sri Lanka from 6 February 1978 to 2 January 1989.

Premadasa is considered as the longest serving uninterrupted Prime Minister of Sri Lanka by serving in that post for nearly 11 years.

In the following year, when J. R. Jayewardene became the first Executive President of the country, he appointed Premadasa as the Prime Minister on 23 February 1978.

He was the first person conferred Sri Lanka's highest civilian award Sri Lankabhimanya in 1986 by President J. R. Jayewardene.