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About Late General Ranjan Wijeratne
His Life> End of an Era but the Legend Continues..
LATE GENERAL RANJAN WIJERATNE
Born on 4th April 1931, to Walpola Mudalige George Hercules Wijeratne and Rosalind Maria Senanayake. General Ranjan Wijeratne received his primary and secondary education at St. Thomas' College, Gurutalawa and Mt. Lavinia, where he excelled in athletics and all forms of sport, debating and agriculture. After his schooling, during which he was awarded the Dias Memorial prize for Agriculture, he took to planting as a career, and served as a working planter for nearly twenty years before being appointed in 1968 as Manager of Demodera Group, the largest tea plantation in Sri Lanka. In this period and in the ten years following, he was Chairman of the Ceylon Planters' Society; Chairman of the Planters' Association of Ceylon ; Chairman of the Agency Section of the Planters' Association ; Chairman of the Colombo Tea Traders' Association ; Vice President of the Ceylon Institute of Planting; Member of the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Board ; Member of the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon; and he rose through the hierarchy of the private sector plantation management, ending as Director/Consultant in Whittals Estates & Agencies Ltd., Gordon Frazer & Co. Ltd, Bosanquet & Skrine Ltd, the leading British tea exporting company group in Sri Lanka, which he served during his entire private sector career.
In 1977 he was invited by His Excellency President J. R. Jayewardene to serve the Government, firstly, by re-organising the Lake House Group of Newspapers as its Director Operations, and in 1978 as Secretary to the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Research and as Chairman of the Agricultural Development Authority, as Mr. Wijeratne was the Chief Architect in the planning and execution of the self-sufficiency programme, which brought about a dramatic change in the agricultural productivity of the country, ending rice imports for the first time in 237 years. With these appointments Mr. Wijeratne moved into the public-sector plantation management. In the mid-eighties, he was simultaneously Chairman of the Agricultural Development Authority ; Sri Lanka State Plantations Corporation ; Land Reform Commission ; the 'giant Pelwatte Sugar Co. Ltd.; and Raja Rata Food Grain Processing Co Ltd ; thus reaching the helm of the management of some of the largest public-sector plantation, in Asia. Besides these posts he held numerous other positions as Chairman, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, and Member of Government organisations in food, research, training, rural credit, foreign investment, essential services, national re-settlement and rural development. Among his numerous posts were those he held in the Ceylon Boy Scouts Movement and the Ceylon Estate Employers Federation.
In 1984 Mr. Ranjan Wijeratne was commissioned in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Sri Lanka Army (Volunteer) Rifle Corps, which was established to provide security to the plantation sector.
As an individual trained in Agriculture and in Administration, with experience in both the private and public sectors, his entry into active full time politics, took place as recently as 1988 when he was appointed Chairman of the United National Party, and later as General Secretary of the Party. The three brief years that followed until his assassination on 2nd March 1991 were the most remarkable period of this political leader's life. He piloted the United National Party to victory, both at the Presidential and Parliamentary general elections and in February 1989, he was appointed Foreign Minister and Minister of State for Defense by the newly elected President of Sri Lanka, His Excellency Ranasinghe Premadasa. In 1990, his last year in office, he held the portfolio of Minister of Plantation Industries while continuing as Minister of State for Defence. He was also, during this period, the President of the Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union and the U.N.P. organiser for the Deraniyagala electorate ; and appointed to the high level committee of officials of the Cabinet to prepare an "Action Programme of People Based Development". Moving into the political arena when terror stalked the land and the Establishment and every democratic institution in the country faced total extinction, Mr. Wijeratne uncompromisingly, gave unprecedented political leadership to the nation's Armed Forces to wipe out terrorism in every form, be it the Jathika Vimukthi Peramuna or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. To this end, he made frequent visits to the South, and especially to the soldiers fighting in the North and East war zones, to boost their morale and to give them courage, confidence and the determination to win. For the causes he believed in, he worked selflessly, fearlessly, ceaselessly, with genuine sincerity and guileless diplomacy, and barely 24 months after moving into the centre stage of politics, when he was assassinated, he had made an indelible mark on the nation. Today, he is the symbol of the greatest sacrifice made by anyone in battle against terrorism in recent history.
As a national salute to his yeoman services in maintaining law and order, and in preserving the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, Ranjan Wijeratne was posthumously promoted to the rank of General; and at the second Convocation, the Kotelawala Defence Academy proudly honoured one of Sri Lanka's most illustrious sons, with the conferment of the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD) (Honoris Causa).
At the time of his death General Ranjan Wijeratne was married for over thirty-six years to Delande Surya Bandara ; had one son named, Rohan.
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