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Widow and deputy to lead Sri Lanka's main Muslim party |
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September 19, 2000
COLOMBO (AP) - Sri Lanka's main Muslim party on Monday chose as its new leaders the widow and deputy of Ports Minister M.H.M. Ashraff, who was killed in a helicopter crash during a campaign trip, said a senior party member. Ferial Ashraff, 48, becomes the first Muslim widow in Sri Lanka to take over the leadership of her husband in a country with a history of politically inexperienced women replacing their dead spouses in powerful positions. Mrs. Ashraff and Rauf Hakeem, a deputy to the late Ashraff, were chosen unanimously by the party's politburo to share the leadership of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), said a senior member, M.L.A.M. Hizbullah. He said there was no vote. Ashraff formed the SLMC in 1981 to represent the country's 1.1 million minority Muslims. Ashraff and 14 others were killed Saturday when the helicopter crashed 65 kilometers (40 miles) east of Colombo. The party demanded an impartial investigation of the crash to be conducted separately from the air force probe. Hizbullah said the party also decided to disregard Ashraff's statement, just before boarding the helicopter, in which he dissociated the SLMC, and a larger umbrella group, the National Unity Alliance, from the People's Alliance headed by President Chandrika Kumaratunga. Hizbullah said the party will remain with the Alliance in most areas during the campaign preceding parliamentary elections on Oct. 10. The SLMC had seven seats in the last Parliament, crucial in a legislature where the government had only a one-seat majority. It is not unusual in Sri Lanka for a widow to take on her husband's political mantle. Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who resigned Aug. 10, was named leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party after her husband, Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, was assassinated in 1959. The next year she became the world's first woman to head an elected government. She is the mother of President Kumaratunga. When the United National Party presidential candidate, Gamini Dissanayake, was killed by a suicide bomber in 1994, his widow, Shrimathi, stepped into his post. Srimani Athulathmudali took over leadership of the Democratic United National Front, when her husband, Lalith, was killed in 1993. Kumaratunga's office announced Monday she had taken over Ashraff's ports, rehabilitation and reconstruction portfolios. She had tried to keep Ashraff in the alliance after he took offense in August to another Muslim Cabinet member's comment that the SLMC could not fight the election alone. |