Kumaratunga, Chandrika Bandaranaike (1945- )

Sri Lankan politician, president 1994-2005. After becoming head of state, she sought to end the long-running civil war with the separatist Tamil Tigers through a radical devolution plan. This was rejected by the Tigers, resulting in the government waging all-out war from 1995. The daughter of former prime ministers Solomon Bandaranaike, the founder of the left-of-centre Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), and Sirimavo Bandaranaike, she won the 1994 parliamentary and presidential elections in alliance with her mother, who became prime minister. In the December 1999 presidential election Kumaratunga was re-elected, just three days after she survived an attack in which more than 20 people were killed by a female suicide bomber, a member of the separatist Tamil guerrilla movement. Both her father, in 1959, and her husband, Vijaya Kumaratunga, in 1988, were assassinated.