Chandrika Kumaratunga - Prime Ministry and Presidency

Prime Ministry and Presidency

Kumaratunga was elected as the chief minister of the Western Province of Sri Lanka in 1993 in a landslide election victory. Kumaratunga herself was elected Prime Minister of a People's Alliance (PA) government on 19 August 1994 and President in the presidential election held shortly thereafter in November. This ended 17 years of UNP rule. She appointed her mother to succeed her as Prime Minister. Early in her term she made conciliatory moves towards the separatist Tamil Tigers in an attempt to end the ongoing civil war. These overtures failed, and she later pursued a more military-based strategy against them.

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