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Sri Lanka United National Party Interlude
The new prime minister, Dudley Senanayake, honored his
election pledge to avoid compromise with the leftist parties and
formed an all-UNP government with support from minor right-of-
center parties. His overall parliamentary majority, however, was
below the minimum seats required to defeat an opposition motion
of no-confidence in the UNP cabinet. Less than a month after its
formation, the UNP government fell. A new election was scheduled
for July 1960.
Return of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party
The UNP fell because it lacked the support of any other major
party in Parliament. The leftists tried to bring it down, and the
Tamils withheld their support because the UNP had earlier hedged
on the issue of the use of the Tamil language. Most important,
the UNP had earned the reputation among Sinhalese voters of being
a party inimical to Sinhalese nationalism.
Meanwhile the SLFP had grown stronger because of its
unwavering support for making Sinhala the only official language.
The SLFP found in the former prime minister's widow, Sirimavo
Ratwatte Dias (S.R.D.) Bandaranaike, a candidate who was more
capable of arousing Sinhalese emotions than Dahanayake had been
in the March elections.
In the July 1960 general election, Bandaranaike was profiled
as a woman who had nobly agreed to carry on the mandate of her
assassinated husband. She received the support of many of the
same small parties on the right and left that had temporarily
joined together to form the People's United Front coalition
(which had brought her husband victory in 1956). She won the
election with an absolute majority in Parliament and became Sri
Lanka's seventh, and the world's first woman, prime minister. The
new government was in many ways the torchbearer for the ideas of
S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, but under his widow's direction, the SLFP
carried out these ideas with such zeal and force that SinhaleseTamil relations sharply deteriorated. One of Sirimavo
Bandaranaike's first official actions was to enforce the policy
of Sinhala as the only officially recognized language of
government. Her aggressive enforcement of this policy sparked
immediate Tamil resistance, which resulted in civil disobedience
in restive Northern and Eastern provinces. Bandaranaike reacted
by declaring a state of emergency and curtailing Tamil political
activity.
Bandaranaike also antagonized other significant minority
groups, particularly the Christians. In response to a
recommendation by an unofficial Buddhist commission, her
government took over the management of state-assisted
denominational schools. The move deprived many Christian
missionary schools of support. Roman Catholic activists
spearheaded demonstrations, which forced the government to
reconsider some of its measures. Still, relations between the
prime minister and the Christian denominations remained unstable.
Bandaranaike moved vigorously early in her administration to
nationalize significant sectors of the economy, targeting
industries that were under foreign control. The 1961 creation of
the State Petroleum Corporation adversely affected the major
petroleum companies--Shell, Esso, and Caltex. The new corporation
was guaranteed 25 percent of the country's total petroleum
business. Under Bandaranaike's instruction, state corporations
began to import oil from new sources, effectively altering for
the first time the pattern of trade that had been followed since
British rule. Sri Lanka signed oil import agreements with the
Soviet Union, Romania, Egypt, and other countries not
traditionally involved in Sri Lankan trade. The government also
put important sectors of the local economy, particularly the
insurance industry, under state control. Most alarming to
Bandaranaike's conservative opponents, however, were her repeated
unsuccessful attempts to nationalize the largest newspaper
syndicate and establish a press council to monitor the news
media.
In foreign relations, Bandaranaike was faithful to her late
husband's policy of "dynamic neutralism," which aimed to steer a
nonaligned diplomatic stance between the superpowers. Sri Lanka
exercised its new foreign policy in 1962 by organizing a
conference of neutralist nations to mediate an end to the SinoIndian border war of 1962. Although the conference failed to end
the war, it highlighted Sri Lanka's new role as a peacebroker and
enhanced its international status.
The UNP opposition was apprehensive of Bandaranaike's
leftward drift and was especially concerned about the SLFP
alliance with the Trotskyite LSSP in 1964. The UNP approached the
March 1965 election as a senior partner in a broad front of
"democratic forces" dedicated to fight the "totalitarianism of
the left." It enjoyed significant support from the Federal Party
(representing Sri Lankan Tamils) and the Ceylon Workers' Congress
(representing Indian Tamils).
Data as of October 1988
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