Sri Lanka's Second Woman Prime Minister

Sri Lanka’s new leader appoints first female prime minister for 24 years Story by Bharatha Mallawarachi, Associated Press • 22h • 1 min read National People’s Power politician Harini Amarasuriya, left, takes the oath for the post of Sri Lanka’s prime minister in front of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in Colombo (Sri Lanka Government Information Department via AP) National People’s Power politician Harini Amarasuriya, left, takes the oath for the post of Sri Lanka’s prime minister in front of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, in Colombo (Sri Lanka Government Information Department via AP)

Sri Lanka’s new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Tuesday swore in an opposition politician as his prime minister, making her the country’s first woman to head the government in 24 years. Harini Amarasuriya, 54, a university lecturer and activist, comes from a similar background as Mr Dissanayake and both are members of the Marxist-leaning National People’s Power coalition. His victory in Saturday’s election over ex-president Ranil Wickremesinghe and opposition leader Sajith Premadasa came as Sri Lankans rejected the old political guard whom they blamed for pushing the country into an unprecedented economic crisis. The last woman to serve as prime minister, the second most-powerful position after the president, was Sirimavo Bandaranaike. She was also the world’s first female head of government when she took up the post in 1960, and served three terms until 2000. Mr Dissanayake’s first major challenge will be to act on his campaign promise to ease the crushing austerity measures imposed by his predecessor Mr Wickremesinghe under a relief agreement with the International Monetary Fund, after Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt. Mr Wickremesinghe has warned that any move to alter the basics of the bailout agreement could delay the release of a fourth tranche of nearly three billion dollars (£2.25 billion). Sri Lanka’s politics have mostly been dominated by men since the island nation introduced universal suffrage in 1931. Ms Bandaranaike’s younger daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, later became the country’s first and only female president, holding office from 1994 to 2005. Related video: Sri Lanka's New President: Anura Kumara Dissanayake Becomes First Communist President of Sri Lanka (WION).Sri Lanka started a new chapter 2 years ago, when National People's Power (NPP) was formed. ECONOMYNEXT – Prime Minister,Harini NIREKA Amarasuriya was ridiculed when she started to express her mind against social injustice to the public like a Marxists Janatha Vimukthi Peremuna activists while teaching as a lecturer at Open University of Sri Lanka, but Harini never had an idea that she will end up as the island nation’s Prime Minister. But, the 54-year old youngest in a three-member elitist family in Colombo on Tuesday,24 September 2024 took oaths as the 16th Prime Minister of Independent Sri Lanka and the third woman Prime Minister in the country. An old girl of Bishops College, Colombo, Amarasuriya was outspoken against social injustice when she was young. She believes it came from her father. Her first job as a social health officer, who dealt with sidelined women in early 1990s including AIDS patients and the war-affected, also helped her to connect any layers in the country – from professionals to uneducated people, from the rich to poor, and from elitists to the underprivileged people. “I am a mother for the whole community, though I don’t have my own child,” Amarasuriya told a recent interview to Hari TV. She has been reformist, a rights activist, an academic, and an intellectual in her life throughout. She is the third woman Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, an old democracy in the world which has chosen the first Woman Prime Minister in 1960. Sri Lanka’s first woman Prime Minister was Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the wife of from Prime Minister S W R D Bandaranaike and the second Prime Minister was their daughter, Chandrika Bandarahanike Kumaratunga. Amarasuriya had no family political background until she became a legislator under the NPP’s national list in 2020. NGO WORKER She first started as a social health worker soon after her graduation, working for a Non Government Organization (NGO) before she worked one-year for Care International, a global NGO. She then became a freelance researcher and was interested in social anthropology in which she later completed her PhD in the University of Edinburgh. “I do not have the ability to do business and I don’t have any business,” she says. She also regrets to have lost her sleeping time and privacy in her life because of her political career. “I am person who have lived for a long time with privacy. That is something I don’t like,” she says. Analysts say Amarasuriya was the key turning point in getting the support of professionals and higher middle income strata in the country. They say people started to trust National People’s Power (NPP) more than JVP which was involved in two bloody insurrections in 1971 and 1988/89. Many people see her as the game changer for JVP. She changed the face of JVP from a leftist and Marxists party to a reformist and progressive group with her improved communication in both native Sinhala and English. She is an academic by profession. Besides her doctorate, he has her basic degree of Bachelor of Arts in Sociology while she completed a Master degree in Applied Anthropology and Development Studies. An eloquent speaker by nature, she responded a foreign journalist when asked about the experience of NPP members to carry out a government. “Well, we don’t have experience in making the country bankrupt for sure, but we will get experience in building the country,” Amarasuriya said.