BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ON NEW FOREIGN MINISTER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 COLOMBO 001994

SIPDIS

STATE FOR SA/INS AND INR/B

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/22/2015
TAGS: PINR PGOV PREL CE
SUBJECT: BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ON NEW FOREIGN MINISTER
MANGALA SAMARAWEERA

Classified By: AMB. JEFFREY J. LUNSTEAD. REASON: 1.4 (B,D).

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MANGALA GETS MFA
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1. (U) On November 23 President Mahinda Rajapakse appointed
a 25-member Cabinet that retained many Ministers in the posts
they held during former President Chandrika Kumaratunga's
administration (septel). Among the few changes made,
however, was the appointment of Sri Lanka Freedom Party
(SLFP) stalwart and Rajapakse campaign manager Mangala
Samaraweera as Foreign Minister, replacing Anura
Bandaranaike, Kumaratunga's brother. This message contains
biographic information on the new Foreign Minister.

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THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN
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2. (SBU) Like President Rajapakse, Samaraweera hails from a
politically prestigious southern family with long-standing
roots in the SLFP. Samaraweera was first elected to
Parliament in 1989, inheriting his seat in the southern
district of Matara from his father, who had been a Minister
in an SLFP government (headed by former President Chandrika
Kumaratunga's mother) in the 1960s; his own mother served for
many years as an SLFP representative to local government in
Matara. With Rajapakse, in 1988 Samaraweera founded the
Mothers' Front, an SLFP-sponsored advocacy group for the
relatives of "disappeared" youth from the south during the
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) insurgency.

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SHIFTING LOYALTIES:
FROM CHANDRIKA'S KITCHEN CABIINET
TO JVP FELLOW TRAVELER
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3. (SBU) Early in his parliamentary career, Samaraweera
aligned himself closely with Chandrika Bandaranaike
Kumaratunga when she was battling her brother Anura for
primacy in the SLFP circa 1993-94, openly characterizing her
brother's faction at the time as "racist." As early as 1993,
when other SLFP MPs were still paying lip service to
Kumaratunga's aged and ailing mother as party leader,
Samaraweera correctly predicted that Chandrika's surging
popularity among young voters would make her the party's
ultimate choice for presidential candidate in 1994.
Kumaratunga repaid his loyalty by appointing him Minister of
Posts and Telecommunications after her victory in August

1994. In a 2000 Cabinet reshuffle, Samaraweera became the
Minister of Urban Development, Construction and Public
Utilities, portfolios he retained until the United National
Party (UNP) gained control of Parliament in 2001. He was
appointed Chief Opposition Whip in 2001.


4. (C) After the SLFP victory in the general elections of
April 2004, Kumaratunga brought Samaraweera back into the
Cabinet--this time as Minister of Information and Media,
Minister of Ports and Aviation and Cabinet Spokesman.
Samaraweera, along with the late Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kadirgamar, played an important role in brokering the United
People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) that brought the former
Marxist insurrectionist JVP into a coalition with
Kumaratunga's SLFP in the April 2004 parliamentary elections.
Thanks in large part to the influence of the Kadirgamar and
Samaraweera--who were arguably among Kumaratunga's closest
advisors at the time--and their assurances that they could
"bring the (JVP) boys along," Kumaratunga began an uneasy and
short-lived alliance with the former revolutionaries.
Samaraweera's unabashed pro-JVP sympathizing strained his
relations with Kumaratunga, who found herself increasingly at
loggerheads with her vociferous coalition partners on a
number of issues, including the economy, privatization and,
most important, the peace process. Her displeasure at his
handling of the Information and Media Ministry--especially
the prevalence of pro-JVP coverage and nationalist overtones
in the state-owned media during his tenure--ultimately cost
him that portfolio. In mid-2005 Kumaratunga took away his
responsibilities as Information Minister and Cabinet
Spokesman.

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JVP: CAN'T LIVE WITH THEM;
CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THEM
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5. (C) Just as Samaraweera championed Kumaratunga's bid for
primacy in the SLFP in the early 1990s, he seems to have been
equally instrumental in helping Mahinda Rajapakse clinch the
party's presidential nomination. Although Samaraweera's ties
to the JVP had often irritated Rajapakse as Prime Minister,
when he became the SLFP presidential candidate Samaraweera's
closeness to the leftist nationalists, with their strong
grass-roots organization in the rural Sinhalese south,
appears to have become more attractive to Rajapakse. In a
reprise of the deal-brokering role that created the UPFA in
1994, Samaraweera helped forge the electoral pact between
Rajapakse and the JVP, a critical element in the SLFP
candidate ultimate success at the presidential polls on
November 17. Although Samaraweera was often quoted in the
local press as Rajapakse's campaign manager, he was actually
one of several with that title--the proliferation of
"managers" possibly Rajapakse's way of watering down
potentially overbearing JVP influence in his campaign.

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PERCEPTIONS OF THE U.S.
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6. (C) In his early political career as an opposition MP and
as a minister in Kumaratunga's first administration,
Samaraweera was friendly and accessible. After his
appointment in 1994 as Minister of Posts and
Telecommunications, he contacted the Embassy to ask for help
in "getting up to speed" in his new position. He became
somewhat less accessible (as did most ministers in
Kumaratunga's government due, in part, to her habit of
calling extended and impromptu Cabinet sessions) as time
elapsed and, as his closeness to the JVP increased, somewhat
more outspoken on anti-globalization and Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM) sympathies. (In a speech before Parliament a year ago,
Samaraweera extolled an essay by author Arundhati Roy
condemning the rapaciousness of corporate globalization and
commending Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for "holding on"
in the fight against globalization "despite the US
Government's best efforts.") In general, however,
Samaraweera does not appear to be anti-west or anti-US and is
genuinely appreciative of US assistance to his
tsunami-devastated home district. He served as the "duty

SIPDIS
minister," or official host, during the post-tsunami visits
of then-Secretary Powell and former Presidents Bush and
Clinton earlier this year.

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PERSONAL DATA
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7. (SBU) Samaraweera was born April 21, 1957. He was
educated at the elite Royal College in Colombo and received a
B.A. with honors in clothing design and technology from St.
Martin's College in London (where, reportedly, the singer Boy
George was a classmate). In the early 1990s he was a visiting
lecturer at the University of Kelaniya in the Aesthetics
Department. A Sinhala Buddhist, he is unmarried and has no
children. His English is excellent.
LUNSTEAD