Associated Press, Sun Nov 20 10:21:38 EST 2005
The exit Saturday of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga from Sri Lanka's powerful executive presidency after 11 years may spell the end of a Bandaranaike dynasty that has been a very visible presence in the country's politics since independence from Britain in 1948.       

Sri Lanka's turbulent politics that made her the daughter of not one, but two prime ministers, and enthroned her as an all-powerful president for 11 years, also cost her dearly.        

Both her father, Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, also known as SWRD, and her husband, film idol Vijaya Kumaratunga, were assassinated.

Her father was shot by a Buddhist monk when she was 15-year-old while her husband's life was snuffed out by a gunman who rode a motorcycle pillion to the gate of their home in a Colombo suburb and blasted his head within sight of their two small children.

Although Kumaratunga is disqualified by the Constitution from standing for president again after two terms, analysts and observers do not rule out a further role for her in national politics.
       
''We can't write a political requiem just yet,'' wrote a political analyst in the Sunday Leader the day after she left office. ''Her two terms as president may be over, but it is likely she may last longer as a political force.''       
Anura Bandaranaike, Kumaratunga's younger brother, remains in politics and was foreign minister in the Cabinet that went out of office with his sister.       
Another Sunday newspaper reported she had asked her successor, Mahinda Rajapakse, to keep Anura in that position, but Rajapakse had been negative.        
When Sirima Bandaranaike, SWRD's widow who succeeded him as prime minister, was in office, Chandrika and Anura fought fiercely for the parliamentary seat that had been a family pocket-borough from SWRD's time.
  
Anura lost that battle as well as the succession to the leadership of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party their father founded. He defected from the party and fought his sister in the political ring but in the end blood proved thicker than water.
      
When the Freedom Party picked Rajapakse, who squeaked through last week's presidential election, for the party ticket, Kumaratunga ensured Anura was named as successor to the prime ministry in the event of a Rajapakse victory.

But Anura's hostility to Rajapakse and his virtual absence from the campaign has ruled him out of that job.
       
Now isolated in the party and with the Bandaranaike magic seemingly fading with his sister's exit, Anura, despite being a brilliant speaker, does not seem destined for national leadership.
       
But the prediction that Kumaratunga may yet not be a spent force can come true.

       
Rajapakse had in an agreement with the Marxist People's Liberation Front, or JVP, for support and pledged he would abolish the executive presidency within three years of assuming office.  

If that happens, and the country returns to a British-style parliamentary system, Kumaratunga can have another bite at the apple.

But as a political columnist noted Sunday, Kumaratunga made the same promise as Rajapakse to the JVP when she stood for president in 1994.
      
The JVP withdrew its candidate from the race and Kumaratunga, and kept the executive presidency firmly in place.
      
If Rajapakse does likewise, Kumaratunga, who turned down the life presidency of her party urged on her a few weeks ago, may get no further bites at the leadership apple.

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- The Academic