22nd death anniversary commemorated:

President Premadasa took the bull by the horns

Former President Ranasinghe Premadasa's 22nd death anniversary fell on Friday 1, 2015 - May Day. He was the second Sri Lankan Head of State to die at the hands of an assassin as a result of political conspiracy.

Denied of Oxford - Cambridge academic distinction but tutored in local schools, Premadasa prided himself as a true product of Kehelwatte amidst those political giants of the fashionable Kurunduwatte, Colombo 7.

From the humble Sucharitha social worker, by dint of sheer determination, self-confidence and hard labour, he rose to the zenith of political office in rapid succession.

He had his 3Cs - Consultation, Compromise and Consensus formula to thrash out knotty issues. He also had his empathy for the have- nots which led him to venture his ground-breaking Janasaviya to remedy the scourge of rural indebtedness. Installing manually - operated water pumps in the water scarcity-hit areas of the country, was his own device. Unlike any other Head of State, Premadasa had a tough time in office when the country engulfed between LTTE terror in the North and the JVP insurgency in the South witnessed a gory spectacle of murder, mayhem and disappearances.

Irrespective of the consequences, he took bold decisions, where necessary, even in the context of international affairs.

Declaring the then British High Commissioner David Gladstone, a persona non grata, ordering the Israeli Interest Section to be closed down and demanding the Indian Government to withdraw the IPKF from Sri Lanka were some of the landmark decisions he made taking mutual relations to a new low.

Impeachment, the decisive moment of his entire political career launched by a group of powerful UNP stalwarts to unseat him became a total flop due to his 'Master-Strokes'.

His untimely death ended a turbulent but short-lived era in Sri Lankan politics.