Madame's Exit

Ceylon's 10,600,000 people expect a good show during their national elections, and the proceedings often resemble a carnival as much as a contest. The biggest crowds last week gathered to hear the top rivals: Madame Sirima Bandaranaike, 48, the world's only woman Prime Minister, and bachelor Dudley Senanayake, 53, whose conservative United National Party was supported by breakaway members of Madame's Freedom Party.

Speaking to a jampacked rally at Kalutara, south of the capital city of Colombo, greying, bespectacled Senanayake wore a green shirt (his party color) and gripped an elephant tusk (the elephant is his party emblem). He cried, "We must beat this government. If it continues, it will spell disaster for Ceylon!" Another antigovernment candidate derided the "socalled golden brains" of Madame Bandaranaike's Marxist Cabinet members and said they were "full of cow dung."

Cheer Leader. The opposition hammered away at Madame's links with Red China. Senanayake charged that the recently signed maritime pact with Peking would allow Red China to use the port of Trincomalee, thus making Ceylon a base for the Communist struggle to control India. Anti-Chinese feelings were so strong that a crowd mistakenly mauled two Japanese newsmen and stole their watches and cameras.

Madame Bandaranaike whizzed through her constituency in a black Mercedes, always accompanied by a cheerleader who helped with the applause. She was usually clad in a blue sari (her party color), and spoke from platforms adorned with a picture of her husband, the late Prime Minister Solomon West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, who was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959. Though she no longer wept in public when recalling her husband, Madame was still campaigning in his memory, promising to follow his policies, which "stood for the middle path in politics." She argued that "the cooperation of the Marxists is essential for the progress of socialism in the country."

Antagonized Monks. Madame's magic was not sufficient last week to over come 41 years of misrule, corruption and wholesale nationalization that has crippled Ceylon's once-flourishing economy based on tea, rubber and coconut. She had also antagonized the numerous and influential Buddhist monks, whose saffron-robed leaders were conspicuous on Senanayake's election platforms.

Though the genial, toddy-swigging Ceylonese love political oratory and revel in elections, they are not very good at issuing a mandate. Last week's election was no exception. In the voting for 151 parliamentary seats, Madame's Freedom Party took a bad beating. Though carrying her own constituency, she and her Marxist allies could muster only 55 seats. Dudley Senanayake's U.N.P. captured 66 seats, an impressive advance but still not enough to form either a majority or a government.

For three days following the election, both sides labored behind the scenes to form alliances with the smaller parties, particularly with the 14-seat Federal Party, which represents the Tamil-speaking minority who work the island's tea plantations. Thousands of leftists swarmed in the road outside Temple Trees, the Prime Minister's official residence, shouting, "Victory!" and "Don't resign!" At the insistence of her Marxist Cabinet ministers, the buxom Prime Minister stoutly clung to power, even after Governor General William Gopallawa asked her to quit. But at last she caved in, and victory went to Dudley Senanayake after midnight of the third day. Wreathed in smiles, he called on the Governor General, bearing a letter of endorsement from the Federal Party leadership that enabled him to form a government.

Aid Again? Ceylon's new chief is a Cambridge graduate whose hobbies are photography and growing orchids. He has twice served as Prime Minister, and said he would follow a "truly nonaligned" foreign policy which, observers thought, would lean toward the West. At home, Senanayake will probably move slowly in denationalizing industry, but he does hope to compensate U.S. and British oil companies whose facilities were expropriated in 1962.

The settlement of the oil dispute should bring a restoration of U.S. economic aid to Ceylon, which was cut off in 1963, and help stabilize the island's shaky economy. Though widely popular, Senanayake lacks political cunning and physical toughness. These qualities, however, are found in his deputy leader of the U.N.P., J. R. Jayewardene, who has been named Minister of State and No. 2 man in the Cabinet. As for imperious Madame Bandaranaike, she is now free to follow her own prescription and become a homebody. When she was Prime Minister she once snapped to a critic of her government, "I don't have to listen to anyone's complaints. I can always quit this and go home to take care of my children."

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