Ratnasiri Wickremanayake

Ratnasiri Wickremanayake (b. 1935) is the 14th Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. He was sworn in as Prime Minister by the President Mahinda Rajapakse on 21 November 2005.

Mr. Wickremanayake was educated in Ananda College, a prestigious Buddhist school in Colombo and later in London, studying for the bar but ultimately chose to enter politics rather than appear for the exam. He was elected President of the Ceylon Student's Association in the United Kingdom in 1955. On his return to Sri Lanka, he was elected to the legislature in 1960, representing Horana for the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (then a part of the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna alliance).

Mr. Wickremanayake received his first ministerial appointment in 1970, when he was appointed Deputy Minister for Justice. He became General Secretary of the SLFP in 1977.

He rose to higher office in the government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, becoming Minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs and Plantation Industries in 1994, and also being named the leader of the SLFP parliamentary party. He became Prime Minister in 2000 after the resignation of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, and briefly headed a minority SLFP government supported by the JVP for a year. His time as prime minister in October 2001 when the legislature after it became apparent that his government was about to lose a no-confidence motion.

After the SLFP won the 2004 general elections, Mr. Wickremasinghe was appointed Minister of Buddhist Affairs, Public Security, and Law and Order, and Deputy Minister for Defence. He held both posts until being made Prime Minister in 2005.

Mr. Wickremanayek is seen by many as taking a harder stance on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. During his previous term as Prime Minister, he refused to consider talks with the main Tamil militant group, the LTTE, until they unambiguously renounced terrorism. He has called for Sri Lanka's family planning policies to be modified, to encourage people to have more children and thereby produce more recruits for the Sri Lankan Army[1]. As an opposition politician, he also spoke against the present ceasefire arrangements at the time they were put in place. Under the Sri Lankan political system, however, the Prime Minister has a rather limited role in framing policy, and it is therefore unclear to what extent his views are the views of the government.