The Country’s First Executive President

How ‘JR’ went from old hand to wily fox

One person’s democrat is another’s dictator – this is perhaps best illustrated in the person and work of Sri Lanka’s first executive president… in terms of relying on the people’s sentiment for the former while wrangling with constitutions to undermine the very franchise that thrust him into the seats of power in the first place.

Junius Richard (‘JR’) Jayewardene had a scintillating journey as a politician along an illustrious career path that led him from the State Council of Ceylon to the brink of statesmanship in San Francisco at the Treaty of Peace with Japan conference.

Other offices held along the way and services rendered speak volumes for the calibre and capacity of this astute advocate and attorney as follows: founder member of the United National Party (UNP) in 1946; first finance minister of a to-be-independent Ceylon (1947); member of a committee to select the national anthem (1951); President of the Board of Control for Cricket (1952); Minister of Agriculture and Leader of the House (1953); and the UNP’s V.P. (1960).

The democrat in him saw JR free to disagree with his party leader Dudley Senanayake (whom he shadowed during the latter’s illness and succeeded upon his death in 1973) while the demagogue not only advocated for the Sinhala Only Act but played the ‘ethnic card’ through endorsing anti-Tamil sentiments in the UNP’s official organ.

However, it was his engineering of a landslide UNP victory against the bitterly unpopular Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in 1976 that set the stage for the wily old fox not only to crush the political opposition with an unprecedented five-sixths majority (accentuated by the ‘first past the post’ electoral system) but also ensured the crippling of its main candidate – Sirimavo Bandaranaike – at a future poll in 1982 by stripping her of civic rights.

JR was able to do this by dint of Bandaranaike’s unconstitutional decision to extend the life of parliament. No little irony then that he as the nation’s first executive president – a post he created for himself by tinkering with the 1972 constitution – gave that office free rein to rule over his people as a virtual tyrant… even undemocratically abolishing an election in 1982 to rule for 16 years.

Junius Richard (‘JR’) Jayewardene had a scintillating journey as a politician along an illustrious career path that led him from the State Council of Ceylon to the brink of statesmanship