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48-512: Wijeyananda Dahanayake ( Sinhala : විජයානන්ද දහනායක Tamil : விஜயானந்த தகநாயக்கா ; 22 October 1902 – 4 May 1997) was a Sri Lankan politician. He was the Prime Minister of Ceylon from September 1959 to March 1960. Born as one of the twin children to a conservative family in Galle, Don Wijeyananda Dahanayake was educated at Richmond College, Galle and S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia . He became

96-635: A five member cabinet . He formed Lanka Prajathanthravadi Pakshaya (Ceylon Democratic Party) from which he contested the March 1960 general elections from Galle which he lost to W. D. S. Abeygoonawardena by 400 votes. His party put forward 101 candidates, but is only four candidates won a seat in parliament. His most notable achievement during his tenor was the repeal of the Capital Punishment Act which Bandaranaike had suspended in Ceylon. The repeal made way for

144-783: A supposed former abundance of lions on the island. According to the chronicle Mahāvaṃsa , written in Pali, Prince Vijaya of the Vanga Kingdom and his entourage merged in Sri Lanka with later settlers from the Pandya kingdom . In the following centuries, there was substantial immigration from Eastern India, including additional migration from the Vanga Kingdom (Bengal), as well as Kalinga and Magadha . This influx led to an admixture of features of Eastern Prakrits. The development of Sinhala

192-653: A Dravidian origin for this word. ), dola for pig in Vedda and offering in Sinhala. Other common words are rera for wild duck, and gala for stones (in toponyms used throughout the island, although others have also suggested a Dravidian origin). There are also high frequency words denoting body parts in Sinhala, such as olluva for head, kakula for leg, bella for neck and kalava for thighs, that are derived from pre-Sinhalese languages of Sri Lanka. The oldest Sinhala grammar, Sidatsan̆garavā , written in

240-593: A free vote for the republican constitution was refused. In the 1977 general elections , he contested from Galle as an independent candidate, but lost to the United National Party candidate Albert de Silva . Dahanayake challenged Silva in an election petition in the Galle High Court and in the Supreme Court, once again representing himself and a judgment in his favor unseating Silva in 1979. Dahanayake gained

288-534: A lawyer and won against the crown prosecution. He contested in a by-election to the State Council of Ceylon in 1944 from Bibile. Even though he lost to the bus magnate S. A. Peiris , he filed an election petition against his opponent and unseated him. He once again represented himself in court without a lawyer. In the following by-election, Dahanayake was elected to the State Council from Bibile. That year, when

336-591: A majority of two over Oaten. Two election petitions were lodged after the General Election on 6 May 2010. The defeated Independent Rodney Connor, who lost in Fermanagh and South Tyrone by four votes has lodged a petition seeking a recount with scrutiny, and the case began on 13 September 2010. In the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency, the defeated Liberal Democrat candidate Elwyn Watkins petitioned against

384-509: A more judicial tribunal. The influence of party bias, however, too obviously prevailed until 1839, when Robert Peel introduced an improved system of nomination, which distinctly raised the character of election committees; but a tribunal constituted of political partisans, however chosen, was still open to jealousy and suspicion. At length the Parliamentary Elections Act 1868 transferred the trial of election petitions to judges of

432-722: A period of prior bilingualism: "The earliest type of contact in Sri Lanka, not considering the aboriginal Vedda languages, was that which occurred between South Dravidian and Sinhala. It seems plausible to assume prolonged contact between these two populations as well as a high degree of bilingualism. This explains why Sinhala looks deeply South Dravidian for an Indo-Aryan language. There is corroboration in genetic findings." In addition to many Tamil loanwords , several phonetic and grammatical features also present in neighbouring Dravidian languages set modern spoken Sinhala apart from its Northern Indo-Aryan relatives. These features are evidence of close interactions with Dravidian speakers. Some of

480-484: A petition is lodged against an election return, there are four possible outcomes: Controverted elections had been originally tried by select committees , afterwards by the Committee of Privileges and Elections, and ultimately by the whole House of Commons , with scandalous partiality, but under the Parliamentary Elections Act 1770 ( 10 Geo. 3 . c. 16), and other later acts, by select committees, so constituted as to form

528-592: A sudden request to the Governor-General of Ceylon for the dissolution of parliament on 5 December 1959 calling for fresh elections. On 7 December, announced his intentions to resign from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party . The Party in turn refused his resignation and instead expelled him. Dahanayake then responded with dismissing Cabinet Minister from the Freedom Party. For the interim he ran the country with

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576-523: A teacher at St. Aloysius' College, Galle before entering active politics having been elected to the Galle Municipal Council in 1939 as a leftist and served as Mayor of Galle. In 1944, he was elected to the State Council of Ceylon and was thereafter elected to the House of Representatives . He served as the member of parliament from Galle from 1947 to 1977, with a brief interval in 1960. In 1956, he

624-581: A thirteen and half-hour speech during the first budget speech, which is the record for the longest speech. He later re-joined the Lanka Sama Samaja Party under Dr N. M. Perera and successfully contested the 1952 general elections from the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and retaining his seat. He was expelled from the party for hosting a reception for the Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake 's visit to Galle. In 1955, he gave leadership to

672-473: Is a conspicuous example of the linguistic phenomenon known as diglossia . Sinhala ( Siṁhala ) is a Sanskrit term; the corresponding Middle Indo-Aryan ( Eḷu ) word is Sīhala . The name is a derivative of [[[:wikt:सिंह|siṁha]]] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script ( help ) , the Sanskrit word for 'lion'. The name is sometimes glossed as 'abode of lions', and attributed to

720-584: Is an Indo-Aryan language primarily spoken by the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka , who make up the largest ethnic group on the island, numbering about 16 million. Sinhala is also spoken as the first language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about 2 million speakers as of 2001. It is written using the Sinhala script , which is a Brahmic script closely related to the Grantha script of South India. Sinhala

768-479: Is divided into four epochs: The most important phonetic developments of Sinhala include: According to Wilhelm Geiger , an example of a possible Western feature in Sinhala is the retention of initial /v/ which developed into /b/ in the Eastern languages (e.g. Sanskrit viṁśati "twenty", Sinhala visi- , Hindi bīs ). This is disputed by Muhammad Shahidullah who says that Sinhala Prakrit branched off from

816-412: Is one of the official and national languages of Sri Lanka, alongside Tamil . Along with Pali , it played a major role in the development of Theravada Buddhist literature. Early forms of the Sinhala language are attested as early as the 3rd century BCE. The language of these inscriptions, still retaining long vowels and aspirated consonants, is a Prakrit similar to Magadhi , a regional associate of

864-546: The Government English Training School on Thurstan Road, Colombo ; before moving to Richmond College, Galle and S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia for his secondary education. He joined the teaching staff of St. Aloysius' College, Galle , where he taught English, mathematics, history and geography and received training at the teaching college in Maharagama. In addition he coached the college athletics and

912-700: The Middle Indian Prakrits that had been used during the time of the Buddha . The most closely related languages are the Vedda language (an endangered, indigenous creole still spoken by a minority of Sri Lankans, mixing Sinhala with an isolate of unknown origin and from which Old Sinhala borrowed various aspects into its main Indo-Aryan substrate), and the Maldivian language . It has two main varieties, written and spoken, and

960-751: The Soulbury Constitution which enabled self rule for Ceylon as an independent Dominion inside the British Commonwealth . He contested the 1947 general elections from the Bolshevik–Leninist Party in the Galle electorate . With a campaign in which he did not spend any money, he won against the wealthy H. W. Amarasuriya contesting from the United National Party and was elected to the House of Representatives . In parliament, he gave

1008-576: The UNESCO National Commission of Ceylon According to Wilhelm Geiger , Sinhala has features that set it apart from other Indo-Aryan languages. Some of the differences can be explained by the substrate influence of the parent stock of the Vedda language . Sinhala has many words that are only found in Sinhala, or shared between Sinhala and Vedda and not etymologically derivable from Middle or Old Indo-Aryan. Possible examples include kola for leaf in Sinhala and Vedda (although others suggest

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1056-501: The returning officer because they had not been stamped properly. Malone lodged an election petition in the High Court to contest the outcome. The petition was dealt with by special case in which Oaten joined. On 6 October 1997 Lord Justice Brooke ruled that the election was void: by a 1974 precedent the failure to stamp the ballots may have been the result of polling station staff forgetting, and had they been counted, Malone would have had

1104-464: The 13th century CE, recognised a category of words that exclusively belonged to early Sinhala. The grammar lists naram̆ba (to see) and koḷom̆ba (fort or harbour) as belonging to an indigenous source. Koḷom̆ba is the source of the name of the commercial capital Colombo . The consistent left branching syntax and the loss of aspirated stops in Sinhala is attributed to a probable South Dravidian substratum effect. This has been explained by

1152-407: The 1960 March elections, he regained it in the general election that followed two months later. Sitting in the opposition from 1960 to 1965, he served as Minister of Home Affairs from 1960 to 1965 and again sat in opposition from 1970 to 1977. He then served as Minister of Co-operatives from 1986 to 1988. He is noted for having contested from almost every major party of his time and has the record for

1200-700: The Eastern Prakrits prior to this change. He cites the edicts of Ashoka , no copy of which shows this sound change. An example of an Eastern feature is the ending -e for masculine nominative singular (instead of Western -o ) in Sinhalese Prakrit. There are several cases of vocabulary doublets , one example being the words mæssā ("fly") and mækkā ("flea"), which both correspond to Sanskrit makṣikā but stem from two regionally different Prakrit words macchiā (Western Prakrits) and makkhikā (as in Eastern Prakrits like Pali ). In 1815,

1248-452: The House of Commons could seat another candidate, order a new writ issued to fill the vacancy or leave the writ unissued for a time, thus suspending the representation of a constituency. As the tolerance of corrupt elections became less during the 18th and 19th centuries, boroughs found to be corrupt could be punished by either changing the area and the qualifications for voting or disenfranchising

1296-525: The Kumbalwella Ward, which he held until 1944. He was elected the first Mayor of Galle in 1939 and served till 1941. When World War II started in the far-east, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party refused to support the British war effort. Dahanayake was prosecuted by the police for organising a strike during the height of war, which angered the British colonial administration. He represented himself in court without

1344-473: The Lanka Sama Samaja Party split, he joined the Bolshevik–Leninist Party led by Dr Colvin R. de Silva . He supported the education reforms initiated by C. W. W. Kannangara by collecting a large number of signatures for a public petition in support of the reforms that ushered equal opportunities for education for all children in the island. In 1947, he was only one of three members who voted against

1392-560: The acting leader of the house after the incumbent C. P. de Silva was taken to London for medical treatment after becoming ill after consuming a glass of milk at a cabinet meeting. Bandaranaike had been scheduled to go to New York to attend the UN General Assembly in late September 1959. With the absence of C. P. de Silva , Bandaranaike had sent a letter to the Governor-General of Ceylon recommending that he appoint Dahanayake as acting Prime Minister during his absence. Bandaranaike

1440-572: The constituency completely. Such mechanism also exists in Hong Kong , then a British colony, and in Australia, New Zealand or other Commonwealth nations. In 1961, Tony Benn was disqualified from taking up his seat after a by-election by an election court because he held a peerage. In 1982, Seamus Mallon was disqualified from taking his seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly as he

1488-463: The election of Phil Woolas , a former Labour Minister, alleging that the result was affected by false statements of fact about his personal character. The election court which heard the case ordered a re-run of the election in Woolas' constituency after finding him guilty of making false statements against his opponent during the original campaign. Phil Woolas sought a judicial review of the decision in

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1536-532: The end of his political career. Dahanayaka died on 4 May 1997 at the age of 95 after a short illness at his home in Richmond Hill, Galle. Dahanayake was a simple man. When appointed Prime Minister, he moved into Temple Trees carrying his own things in two old suitcases from his room in the Srawasthi Mandiraya . He found the prime minister's bed room too large and had it partitioned. When he resigned from

1584-575: The execution of those convicted of the assassination of Bandaranaike. He successfully contested the July 1960 general elections from the Lanka Prajathanthravadi Pakshaya in Galle and elected to parliament defeating W. D. S. Abeygoonawardena . He seat in the opposition and was called before the commission of inquiry into the Bandaranaike assassination to give evidence in 1963. That year he

1632-459: The features that may be traced to Dravidian influence are: ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නවා dannavā know ඒක අලුත් කියලා මම දන්නවා ēka aḷut kiyalā mama dannavā it new having-said I know "I know that it is new." ඒක ēka it අලුත් aḷut new ද da Q කියලා kiyalā having-said මම mama I දන්නේ Election petition When

1680-590: The island of Ceylon came under British rule . During the career of Christopher Reynolds as a Sinhalese lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London , he extensively researched the Sinhalese language and its pre-1815 literature. The Sri Lankan government awarded him the Sri Lanka Ranjana medal for his work. He wrote the 377-page An anthology of Sinhalese literature up to 1815 , selected by

1728-602: The junior cricket teams and organized the English Literary Union and the Debating Society. He also organized student protests against the British colonial administration. Dahanayake became active in pre-independence politics while serving as a teacher and switched to full-time politics. As a member of the Trotskyite Lanka Sama Samaja Party , he was elected to the Galle Municipal Council from

1776-680: The longest speech in parliament, lasting thirteen and half hours. He was born as a twin in Dangedera, Richmond Hill, Galle and was named Don Wijeyananda Dahanayake after the Wijayananda Pirivena. His father was Don Dionesius Panditha Sepala Dahanayake, was a Muhandiram , who later served as the Kackckeri Mudliyar of Galle and was a scholar in oriental languages. His twin brother was Kalyanapriya Dahanayake. Dahanayake received his education first at Rippon Girls' School, Galle and then at

1824-411: The nationalist movement that sort for " Sinhala only " under a new party called the "Basha Peramuna" (Language Front) which aligned with the alliance Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (Peoples United Front) led by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike which contested the 1956 general elections and won a landslide victory against the ruling United National Party which was reduced to eight seats in parliament. Dahanayake

1872-561: The opposition in the house of representatives moved a vote no confidence against the government on 30 October 1959, the government on the vote 48 votes to 43. Even before Bandaranaike's assassination, there was infighting among the alliance parties of the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna . The situation deteriorated under Dahanayake, which was compounded by the investigation into the assassination which drew suspicion on several ministers and resulted their resignation or removal. Dahanayake made

1920-688: The post of prime minister following his electoral defeat, he packed his personal belongings to the same suitcase left Temple Trees to Galle . He remained a bachelor throughout his life. *Appointed MPs were abolished in 1972 by the First Republican Constitution Sinhala language Sinhala ( / ˈ s ɪ n h ə l ə , ˈ s ɪ ŋ ə l ə / SIN -hə-lə, SING -ə-lə ; Sinhala: සිංහල , siṁhala , [ˈsiŋɦələ] ), sometimes called Sinhalese ( / ˌ s ɪ n ( h ) ə ˈ l iː z , ˌ s ɪ ŋ ( ɡ ) ə ˈ l iː z / SIN -(h)ə- LEEZ , SING -(g)ə- LEEZ ),

1968-483: The seat in the following by-election as the candidate from the United National Party with a majority of 13,012 votes and sat as a backbencher. He was appointed Minister of Co-operatives by J. R. Jayewardene in March 1986 and serving till 1988. The United National Party nominated Dahanayake through the national list for the 1989 general elections , his name was removed later and he was not able to enter parliament. This marked

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2016-405: The superior courts, to whose determination the House gives effect, by the issue of new writs or otherwise. The House, however, still retains and exercises its jurisdiction in all cases not relegated, by statute, to the judges. Petitions, which resulted in the election in a constituency being held void used to be common after every general election, but are now rare. When an election was held void

2064-545: Was a member of Seanad Éireann , the upper chamber of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland , at the time of his election. A recent example of an election being held void was when the 1997 election of Member of Parliament for Winchester , Mark Oaten , ( Liberal Democrat ) was contested by the Conservative Party candidate Gerry Malone . Oaten had won the seat by two votes, with 55 ballot papers had been rejected by

2112-622: Was appointed to the Cabinet of Ministers as the Minister of Education . He unexpectedly succeeded S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike as Prime Minister when the latter was assassinated on 26 September 1959. His tenure as the caretaker Prime Minister was short as he was unable to keep together the alliance formed by Bandaranaike. He dismissed the Cabinet of Ministers and called for fresh elections, for which he formed his own party. Although he lost his parliamentary seat in

2160-560: Was assassinated on 26 September 1959 and with the letter as a reference, Sir Oliver Goonetilleke , the Governor General of Ceylon appointed Dahanayake as Prime Minister. He was later confirmed by parliament in this position. He also took on the portfolios of defence and external affairs (customary held by the Prime Minister) as well as education. His tenure as prime minister was controversial and difficult. His first challenge came when

2208-572: Was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Vidyodaya University and adopted the style "Dr Wijeyananda Dahanayake". In 1964, Dahanayake gained fame when he attempted and was prevented from entering parliament chambers in a span cloth (known locally as an Amude) in protest of government of Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike 's rationing of clothing to two yards of textiles per month per person due to foreign exchange shortage. The following day dailies carried photos of Dahanayake in an Amude. He

2256-523: Was himself re-elected from Galle having joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party . With S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike becoming prime minister, Dahanayake was appointed Minister of Education by Bandaranaike. As Education Minister he re-introduced the mid-day school meal for students by providing a free bun, which gained him the nickname "Bannis Mama" (Bun Uncle). He gave university status to the Vidyodaya Pirivena and Vidyalankara Pirivena . In 1959, he became

2304-514: Was re-elected 1965 general elections from the Sri Lanka Freedom Socialist Party led by C. P. de Silva. The party supported the United National Party in forming a national government and Dahanayake was appointed Minister of Home Affairs . He was re-elected in the 1970 general elections from the United National Party and sat in the opposition. He resigned from United National Party and sat as an independent after his request for

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