Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga Madam President (Best President)
who served from 12 November 1994 to 19 November 2005. The country's only female president to date, she is the daughter of two former prime ministers and also the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) until the end of 2005.[Born Chandrika Bandaranaike, she comes from an aristocratic family with a long history of socio-political involvement in the country. Her father, S.W.R.D Bandaranaike was a government minister at the time of her birth and later became Prime Minister. He was assassinated in 1959, when Chandrika was fourteen. Chandrika's mother, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, then became the world's first female prime minister, in 1960. Chandrika's brother, Anura Bandaranaike is a former Speaker of the Parliament of Sri Lanka and a former minister who died in March 2008. Her sister Sunethra Bandaranaike is a well-known philanthropist and runs the Sunera Trust. Their grandfather, Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranike, was the Maha Mudaliyar, the chief Ceylonese representative and advisor to the Governor of Ceylon during British colonial rule.
