List of Presidents of Sri Lanka

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1 List of presidents
2 Last election
3 See also
4 External links

List of presidents

The following is a list of Sri Lankan Presidents. The President of Sri Lanka is elected under the Sri Lankan form of the Supplementary Vote.

William Gopallawa (May 22, 1972 - 4 February, 1978)
Junius Richard Jayawardene (4 February, 1978 - January 2, 1989)
Ranasinghe Premadasa (2 January, 1989 - 1 May, 1993)
Dingiri Banda Wijetunge (1 May, 1993 - November 12, 1994)
Chandrika Kumaratunga (November 12, 1994 - November 19, 2005)
Mahinda Rajapaksa (November 19, 2005; incumbent)

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Last election

Template:Sri Lanka presidential election, 2005 ==Sri Lanka's Executive Presidency In Sri Lanka, Executive Presidency is an extremely powerful executive post.

Under Sri Lankan Constitution the Executive President cannot be held accountable on any circumstances for his/her actions.
The President cannot be taking to court.
The President can unilaterally dissolve the country's Parliament at any time after one year of its formation.

"Of all the Executive Presidencies in the world, Sri Lanka's is the most powerful, even more than the United States' or the French Presidency," says Rohan Edirisinghe international law expert of Colombo University's Law Faculty.

Under emergency powers vested in the office, the President can also take steps overriding any law passed by Parliament. Though the emergency motion has to come before Parliament every 30 days for extension, once it is passed, the President can promulgate any regulation under emergency laws during that month without reference to Parliament.

Many sections of Sri Lankan opinion want an abolition of their presidency which is seen as autocratic and concentrating too much power in one individual.

Evidence of the temptation such powers can be to an incumbent, that Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who had vowed to abolish the office within a year of coming to power in 1994, seeked a second term.

While contesting for a second term, Kumaratunga again promised to abolish the Presidency as part of her package of constitutional reforms. However, her main opponent Ranil Wickremesinghe said he favours a reformed Executive Presidency accountable to Parliament and short of its immunity.

Sri Lanka shifted from the Prime Ministerial to the Presidential system in 1978 under Junius Richard Jayewardene, who ensured the office he was creating for himself was armed with draconian authority.

The justification then was that for stability and accelerated development, the country required a strong executive, freed from the whims of legislature. Especially in an ethnically diverse country like Sri Lanka there has been instances of unstable legislature due to no party gaining outright majority and thus unable to perform governement duties.

Three others have held the post since Jayewardene's retirement in 1988. Ranasinghe Premadasa was elected that year, and on his assassination in 1993, Dingiri Banda Wijetunge, who was then Prime Minister, succeeded him. The next year saw the election of Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Of the four, analysts see Premadasa and Kumaratunga as the "most Presidential". Jayawardene, with a strong tradition of Parliament behind him, formed a powerful cabinet and relied on it even though he did not need to. But not so Kumaratunga or Premadasa.

Unlike other Executive Presidencies, the Sri Lankan President can function as a Cabinet Minister. Kumaratunga held the Finance and Defence portfolios but in five years, was not answerable to Parliament on either subject. The incumbent President Rajapakse holds Finance and Planning, Defence, as well as Religious Affairs.

By extension, the cabinet itself is not as powerful as the Presidential Secretariat. For instance, during President Ranasinghe Premadasa's time, his Adviser Bradman Weerakoon was the de facto Foreign Minister though Harold Herath actually held the portfolio.

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