Commentary
Advocata Conversations: Presidential Edition. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga
Authors & Contributors
Murtaza Jafferjee
Guest:
This wide-ranging Advocata Conversation brings together former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and the host to explore her upbringing, ideological evolution, and the economic reforms undertaken during her presidency — framed explicitly for a younger audience largely unfamiliar with the economic policy landscape of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The conversation opens with personal history. Kumaratunga describes a childhood immersed in politics from birth, with her father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike serving in government from her earliest memories, and her mother Sirimavo balancing political life with social service work. She recalls a disciplined, modest upbringing — limited clothing allowances, a fixed weekly allowance meant to encourage frugality, and strong parental discouragement of indulgence — alongside a household steeped in reading, where her father modeled intellectual curiosity and physical discipline through daily yoga and exercise. She shares a poignant memory of her father’s final dinner at home before his assassination in 1959, when she was 14, including a small exchange about the family’s inability to travel abroad together — a detail that stayed with her.
Asked about her father’s economic philosophy, Kumaratunga clarifies he was not an economist by training but a classics scholar and committed democrat, shaped significantly by Fabian socialist ideas encountered during his time at Oxford. His priorities, she explains, centered on ensuring the benefits of independence reached ordinary Sri Lankans, including through the “Sinhala Only” policy — framed by her as an identity and empowerment measure for the Sinhalese majority — later balanced by the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact addressing Tamil and Muslim rights, though implementation was disrupted by opposition. Economically, his brief three-and-a-half-year premiership focused on nationalization of foreign-held assets, land reform for paddy farmers, and founding institutions like the People’s Bank and the EPF, reflecting the era’s broader global embrace of state-led economic development.
Kumaratunga then details her own academic path: studying political science at Paris’s elite Sciences Po, followed by doctoral research in development economics at the Sorbonne on the socio-economic transformation of ancient Iran into commercial capitalism — work she left roughly 75% complete. She explains her choice of France over the more conventional UK path as an act of youthful rebellion, having previously failed to gain entry to Sri Lanka’s sole medical school by a narrow margin and switched to law before winning a competitive French government scholarship. Notably, she recounts participating directly in the barricades of the 1968 Paris student uprising during her studies.
She returned to Sri Lanka in 1972, drawn back by an invitation to join the Land Reform Commission under Minister Hector Kobbekaduwa, ultimately staying five years. She clarifies she had no role in conceiving the land reforms — which nationalized roughly one million acres each from Sri Lankan landowners and foreign-owned plantations — but led the creation of an innovative program called Janavasa, cooperative farms managed by educated but unemployed rural youth, which grew to 275 units employing 30,000 young people. She notes with regret that these cooperatives were dismantled once J.R. Jayewardene’s government came to power, with land redistributed to political allies.
The conversation turns to the 1972 Republican Constitution’s controversial removal of civil service independence, placing secretary appointments under Cabinet control. Kumaratunga, who was abroad when it was drafted, attributes this to the socialist-leaning drafters’ distrust of an elitist civil service that had previously been implicated in coup attempts against her mother’s government, while acknowledging the change was likely a mistake in retrospect.
She describes her own ideology at the time as democratic socialism — distinct from Stalinist or authoritarian models — emphasizing broad-based economic participation rather than elite ownership. She credits extended dialogue with Ronnie de Mel, a former colleague of her mother’s government living in London, along with her own doctoral supervisor’s gradual embrace of market economics, and years of discussion among left-leaning intellectual circles in Colombo and Paris, for her eventual shift toward free-market economics — a transition she resisted initially out of ideological loyalty before ultimately accepting the shift underway globally.
After her husband Vijaya Kumaratunga’s assassination by the JVP in 1988 forced her into exile in London with her three children, she returned to Sri Lankan politics in 1991 at the urging of party loyalists, becoming Chief Minister of the Western Province in 1993 and winning the presidency in 1994, ending 17 years of UNP rule.
On assuming office, she describes coining the phrase “capitalism with a human face” to reconcile her ideological journey — embracing market economics while committing to redistributing gains to the poor. She inherited a relatively stable economy with roughly 13% inflation, and describes uncovering non-transparent privatizations of 39 state enterprises under the previous government, handed to unqualified buyers, several of which had subsequently failed. Despite having documented evidence, she deliberately chose not to pursue prosecutions, framing her priority as national healing over political retribution.
A significant portion of the conversation addresses how she assembled her economic team, given a cabinet largely lacking prior governance experience. She describes actively recruiting outside experts regardless of party affiliation — including Lal Jayawardena as chief economic adviser, A.S. Jayawardena (later Central Bank Governor), and Ravi Algama despite his UNP affiliation — building what she called an Expert Advisory Committee on the Economy. She also headhunted younger figures like Mano Tittawella and Tilan Wijesinghe, the latter becoming the youngest-ever BOI chairman, both of whom she required to prove themselves gradually rather than granting immediate senior positions.
She defends her controversial decision to pay market-competitive salaries to recruit skilled professionals into government roles — including inviting back Sri Lankan professionals who had emigrated after the 1983 riots — describing her decision-making process as one of private conviction followed by targeted consultation before firm implementation, regardless of anticipated resistance.
The conversation covers several major state enterprise reforms under her presidency: the privatization of Sri Lanka Telecom (led by the late Mangala Samaraweera, involving international union study trips funded by the World Bank to build trade union buy-in); the divestment of state plantations to private management, which she reconciled against her mother’s earlier land nationalization by arguing that changed circumstances warranted changed policy; and the transformation of Air Lanka into Sri Lankan Airlines through a partnership with Emirates, which she personally negotiated after earlier approaches to British Airways and Air France collapsed following a bombing in Colombo. She recounts personally rejecting an offer of lifetime free first-class travel from Emirates representatives during price negotiations, insisting on maintaining a corruption-free process throughout — a claim she says Emirates itself later corroborated as unique among the airline’s global partnerships.
She also discusses restructuring insolvent state banks (People’s Bank and Bank of Ceylon) by recruiting foreign CFOs with World Bank support, while firmly resisting sustained IMF and World Bank pressure to fully privatize the banks themselves — describing this as protecting “the family silver.” Other reforms covered include the South Asia Gateway Terminal port PPP (facing internal government resistance she attributes to Mahinda Rajapaksa), full liberalization of textile import duties despite domestic manufacturer and smuggler opposition, and expanded tax incentives for local entrepreneurs previously reserved for foreign investors — a policy championed by her late Minister of Industries, C.V. Gooneratne.
A substantial segment covers the landmark Indo-Lanka Free Trade Agreement, which she pursued despite domestic anti-India sentiment linked to earlier JVP violence and skepticism from her own advisers. She credits her close personal relationship with the Nehru-Gandhi family — including a warm relationship with Sonia Gandhi — as instrumental in overcoming resistance from India’s protectionist bureaucracy, describing tense multi-day negotiations, including an all-night session where she ultimately threatened to walk away entirely before securing agreement.
The conversation also touches on the origins of key technocrats, including P.B. Jayasundera, whom she recruited as a young, unassuming Central Bank officer and gradually promoted, and Razeen Sally’s relative, Rajan Brito, an old family friend recruited specifically for his skills at the BOI.
On corruption, Kumaratunga argues Sri Lanka was comparatively far less corrupt than regional and African peers prior to the open economy’s abrupt introduction under J.R. Jayewardene, which she describes as poorly sequenced and insufficiently regulated. She credits her own administration’s tender procedures document — mandating strict, standardized processes for government procurement — as a meaningful anti-corruption tool later discarded entirely under the Rajapaksa administration, to the point where she says the original document couldn’t even be located in the Finance Ministry years later.
Finally, the conversation addresses her unfinished 2000 constitutional reform effort, drafted with G.L. Peiris, which would have abolished the executive presidency, strengthened independent commissions, and addressed the ethnic conflict through equal rights provisions — reforms she believes would have improved economic governance by reducing concentration of power and strengthening democratic, deliberative decision-making. She confirms she remains firmly convinced the executive presidency should be abolished, citing its susceptibility to abuse.
Reflecting on regrets, she states she cannot identify concrete alternative choices given the constraints of governing during an active civil war, though she expresses lasting frustration at her inability to secure cooperation from opposition leadership on constitutional reform. She closes by urging capable, ethical, and skilled younger people — regardless of age — to enter politics, framing it as essential to Sri Lanka’s future trajectory.
