The most enigmatic element in the new political situation in Ceylon has been the personal quality of Mrs. Bandaranaike. Much of this mystery was dispelled when she granted her first interview with the press today. The new Prime Minister showed herself to be calmly aware of the difficulties before her, of the magnitude of the task she has without much premeditation taken on; but her approach is pragmatic and optimistic and she has an awareness of the sources of her influence that should enable her to translate this into effective political authority.
Mrs. Bandaranaike sees her sex as an asset. "I should be able to get more cooperation than a man", she said. "I have had offers of cooperation from quarters I would not normally have had. Also the people realize it is time to settle down to work, it is obvious the people want that."
She conceded that her direct political experience had been very limited but pointed out that she had been concerned with politics through her late husband, Mr. Solomon Bandaranaike, since her marriage 20 years ago. This had given her a knowledge of party affairs and of the men with whom she would have to work and presumably of those who will be working against her. All in all, she was "not as inexperienced as my opponents try to make out".
Mrs. Bandaranaike received your Correspondent at her home in Colombo - she has not yet moved into the Prime Minister's official residence - in a room largely decorated with portraits and photographs of her husband and marked still with a reminder of his sudden death in a hole left in a windowpane by one of the assassin's bullets.
All this suggested a question about the need for Mrs. Bandaranaike to begin to assert herself as a national leader in her own right rather than to continue to speak, as she has done since her election, as the torch-bearer for her fallen husband. She answered without resentment that she had come into politics to carry on her husband's work. This was the inspiration behind her, and it would continue to be so.
She had not at first had any idea of taking up a political career, but she came to feel that the country wanted it. Moreover, she did not want to see the Freedom Party die with her husband, and her becoming first its patron and then its leader was the only way to unite it. Her husband's political enemies were trying to implicate it in his murder, and her action in joining the party helped to clear it of this false imputation.
Mrs. Bandaranaike has no fears of her Government being drawn against its will to the left, and in Colombo, where there is often exaggerated apprehension of the power and menace of the Marxist Parties, there is something refreshing in such robust self-confidence. "I think there are some people with left leanings in the party," she said, "but all accept my husband's policies, I don't think we shall have any difficulties. Why anticipate them".
There, it seems, Mrs. Bandaranaike might have been a little over-sanguine, because her husband was rarely able to reconcile the left and right wings of the Freedom Party; but she is not dependent upon the support of the Marxist left as his Government was, and she may be right in claiming that the left-wing of her parliamentary party now consists of Socialists and Progressives - although other members of the Freedom Party are already calling them Marxists and suggesting that they have infiltrated the party.
While she is aware that she has not yet fully felt the weight of her new office Mrs. Bandaranaike is not entertaining any thoughts of prematurely putting a term to her tenure - it has been suggested that she might before long consider leaving the Prime Ministership for the Governor-General's post. "No Prime Minister wants to carry on if he can't do the job", she said, but she had not considered quitting the office and she plainly expected to be able to do the job and do it well.
As well as the commitment to her husband, she feels a tie with, and responsibility for, the people who she believes wanted her to carry on his work, the rural poor whose votes gave her party its parliamentary majority.
Mrs. Bandaranaike is an impressive woman and she has been ill-advised to keep away from the press since her election. Her self-confidence is encouraging and, one feels, well founded. She is a person of simple and direct manner, young-looking, with strong chin and full mouth and a shining smile, and one leaves her to what must be lonely work with sympathy and respect and the feeling that Ceylon has been fortunate in finding this woman to be its first woman Prime Minister.
COLOMBO, July 27.- The chief Colombo magistrate today committed five men for trial in the Supreme Court on charges of conspiracy to murder Mr. Solomon Bandaranaike. One of the accused, the Buddhist monk Somarama Thero, was also charged with murder. - Reuter.
