Vijaya Kumaranatunga - Political Career

Political Career

He was also a politician, who started his political life in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. He later joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and was active in the presidential campaign of Hector Kobbekaduwa in 1982. After the election, he was jailed under the emergency regulations by JR Jayawardena for allegedly being a "Naxalite" (a political creed hitherto and henceforth unknown in Sri Lanka), but he was never charged. He founded the Sri Lanka Mahajana Party (SLMP). He and his party argued for peace in the then ongoing civil war in Sri Lanka.

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