Chanaka Amaratunga
| Chanaka Amaratunga | |
|---|---|
| Born | 19 April 1958 |
| Died | 1 August 1996 (aged 38) |
| Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Education |
St Thomas' College, University College, Oxford, University of London |
| Known for | Founding the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka |
| Political party | Liberal Party of Sri Lanka |
Chanaka Amaratunga (19 April 1958 – 1 August 1996) was the founder of the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka.
Schooled at St Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia where he was a prominent member of the Debating, Drama and Parliamentary societies. Contemporaries included Richard de Zoysa Rohan Edirisinghe, Uthum Herat and R. D. Gunaratne.
Amaratunga went on to read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at University College, Oxford and was secretary of the Oxford Union. He obtained a doctorate from the University of London for a thesis on Iranian relations with the West in the 1950s. He was interested in politics from his schooldays, and a firm adherent of the United National Party (UNP), the more conservative of the two main Sri Lankan parties. He welcomed its overwhelming victory at the 1977 elections, and its reversal, under Junius Richard Jayewardene, of the statist economic policies of the past.
During the early 1980s, Amaratunga believed that Jayewardene was moving towards authoritarianism, and that the open economy he promoted was not sustained by any political philosophy. Amaratunga established the Council for Liberal Democracy, which was intended to develop a conceptual framework for the reforms which he believed should be taken further.
Amaratunga broke conclusively with Jayewardene's UNP when it pushed through a referendum in 1982 to postpone parliamentary elections for six years. Apart from the damage to democracy, the measure as Amaratunga predicted led to opposition going underground, and to severe terrorist activity throughout the country in the late eighties. Though Jayewardene's successor, Ranasinghe Premadasa, managed to restore order in the south after elections were held, the resentment that had peaked in the north has contributed to continuing conflict with the Tamil Tigers.
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