Sri Lankabhimanya Ranasinghe Premadasa (Sinhala: රණසිංහ ප්රේමදාස Raṇasiṃha Premadāsa; Tamil: ரணசிங்க பிரேமதாசா Raṇaciṅka Pirēmatācā; 23 June 1924 – 1 May 1993) was a Sri Lankan politician who served as the third president of Sri Lanka from 1989 until his assassination in 1993. A longtime member of the United National Party, he previously served as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka from 1978 to 1989, with his tenure making him the longest-serving uninterrupted Prime Minister of Sri Lanka.
Amongst Sri Lankans, Premadasa has left behind a mixed legacy. While he was seen as a spokesperson of the poor, common man, his handling of the country's two civil conflicts, the JVP insurrection and the Sri Lankan civil war, have been heavily criticised. He was the first person to be conferred with the Sri Lankabhimanya, Sri Lanka's highest civilian award, in 1986 by president J. R. Jayewardene.
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, with 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 St. 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 objective of uplifting the economic, social and spiritual development of low-income people living in shanty areas of Colombo. He was the full-time organizer of the community development project in the area in 1939. The 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 the limited future prospects in the Labour Party in the mid-1950s, Premadasa supported Sir John Kotelawala's attempts to remove the then-incumbent Mayor of Colombo, Dr N. M. Perera of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. In 1955, Premadasa succeeded T. Rudra as Deputy Mayor and joined the United National Party in 1956 following the successful removal of Perera as mayor in February 1956.
From the UNP, Premadasa contested the 1956 general election from the Ruwanwella electorate but lost to N. M. Perera. Following his defeat, he joined J. R. Jayewardene in 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. The march was disrupted at Imbulgoda by thugs led by S. D. Bandaranayake.
Premadasa was elected as the third Member of Parliament from Colombo Central in the March 1960 general election. The short-lived Dudley Senanayake government was defeated in three months and in the July 1960 general election 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 until 1965. During this time, he worked to open preschools for poor families and initiated vocational training centres in sewing and tailoring for the youth.
Minister of Local Government (1965–1970)
Premadasa successfully contested the Colombo Central electorate in the 1965 general election and was elected to parliament and appointed as Chief Government Whip and parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Local Government M. Tiruchelvam. When Tiruchelvam resigned in 1968 after the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi left Dudley Senanayake's government, Premadasa was appointed as Minister of Local Government and became a minister in 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 across the island. Premadasa turned Radio Ceylon, the oldest radio station in South Asia, into a public corporation – the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation on 5 January 1967.
Opposition and the Citizens Front (1970–1977)
In the following 1970 general election, Premadasa was elected as the 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. Furthermore, he was elected chairman of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth Inter-Parliamentary Association held in Australia.
Premadasa was a member of the Constituent Assembly which drafted the constitution of 1972. Premadasa called for reforms of the party which Dudley 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, Senanayake died on 13 April 1973 following a heart attack and Senanayake loyalists found fault with Premadasa. Jayawardane, who became UNP leader came to terms with Premadasa, who stopped the Citizens Front and returned to fully support the UNP, driving up its membership at grassroot levels and becoming the deputy leader of the party.
Minister of Local Government, Housing and Construction (1977–1978)
Premadasa was re-elected as the first member of parliament for Colombo Central in the 1977 general election and was appointed Leader of the House and Minister of Local Government, Housing and Construction.
In the following year, when J. R. Jayewardene became the first executive president of Sri Lanka, he appointed Premadasa as prime minister on 6 February 1978. Premadasa began to define the new role of the prime minister under an executive president. He took residence at Temple Trees, retained the use of the Prime Minister's Lodge and established a new prime minister's office at Sirimathipaya. He began representing Sri Lanka internationally, having led the Sri Lankan delegation to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 1979, where he secured British funding for the construction of the Victoria Dam. He headed the Sri Lankan delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 where he addressed the general assembly.
Continuing to hold the portfolios of Local Government, Housing and Construction, he initiated his political program, shelter for the poor, after the United Nations declared a Year of Shelter. His proposal to declare 1987 as the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless was unanimously accepted at the 37th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Other policies included Jana Saviya, the instrument he used to help the poor, a foster parents scheme, the Gam Udawa project with which he tried to stir up the stupor in the villages, the mobile secretariat whereby he took the central government bureaucracy to the peasants, the Tower Hall Foundation for drama and music, and the pension schemes he initiated for the elder artistes. On the economic front, the garment industry project that he initiated became a forerunner in earning foreign exchange and provision of employment in the villages. Premadasa served as prime minister from 1978 to 1988, with little rifts with president Jayewardene with the exception of the latter's signature of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Jayewardene decided to step down as president after his second term and Premadasa was nominated as the party's candidate for the presidential election set for December 1988.