Wijeyananda Dahanayake, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Wijeyananda Dahanayake

Sri Lankan Prime Minister

Date of Birth: 22-Oct-1902

Place of Birth: Galle, Southern Province, Sri Lanka

Date of Death: 04-May-1997

Profession: politician, diplomat

Nationality: Sri Lanka

Zodiac Sign: Libra


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About Wijeyananda Dahanayake

  • Wijeyananda Dahanayake (Sinhala: ????????? ?????? Tamil: ????????? ?????????; 22 October 1901 – 4 May 1997) was a Sri Lankan politician.
  • He was the Prime Minister of Ceylon from September 1959 to March 1960.Born to as twin to a conservative family in Galle as Don Wijeyananda Dahanayake, he was educated at Richmond College, Galle and S.
  • Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia.
  • He became a teacher at St.
  • Aloysius' College, Galle before entering active politics having been elected to the Galle Municipal Council in 1939 as a leftist and served as Mayor of Galle.
  • In 1944, he was elected to the State Council of Ceylon and was thereafter elected to the House of Representatives.
  • He served as the member of parliament from Galle from 1947 to 1977, with a brief interval in 1960.
  • In 1956 he was appointed to the Cabinet of Ministers as the Minister of Education.
  • He unexpectedly succeeded S.
  • W.
  • R.
  • D.
  • Bandaranaike as Prime Minister when the latter was assassinated on 26 September 1959.
  • His tenure as the caretaker Prime Minister was short as he was unable to keep together the alliance formed by Bandaranaike.
  • He dismissed the Cabinet of Ministers and called for fresh elections, for which he formed his own party.
  • Although he least his parliamentary seat in the 1960 March elections, he regained it in the general election that followed two months later.
  • Sitting in the opposition from 1960 to 1965, he served as Minister of Home Affairs from 1960 to 1965 and again sat in opposition from 1970 to 1977.
  • He then served as Minister of Co-operatives from 1986 to 1988.
  • He is noted for having contested from almost every major party of his time and has the record for the longest speech in parliament, lasting thirteen and half hours.

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