C. P. de Silva

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Charles Percival de Silva (16 April 1912 – 9 October 1972) was a Sri Lankan politician and civil servant. He had served as the Minister of Finance, Minister of Lands, Land Development and Agriculture; and Minister of Power and Irrigation,^[1][2] and Chairperson of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, and later joined as a senior member of the United National Party.

Born in the southern town of Balapitiya, he was educated at St Thomas' College, Mt. Lavinia and studied mathematics at the Ceylon University College and the University of London. Joining the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service, he served as an Assistant Government Agent in the North Central Province, assisting D. S. Senanayake in his agricultural projects in the province and served as Director of Land Development, in the Ministry of Agriculture under Dudley Senanayake, who succeed his father as Minister of Agriculture when the latter became the first prime minister of Ceylon. Falling-out with the younger Senanayake, C. P. de Silva resigned from the civil service.

Entering politics from the newly formed Sri Lanka Freedom Party, he played a major role in S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike's landslide victory in the 1956 general elections and became the top cabinet minister. He missed the opportunity to succeed Bandaranaike as prime minister, when the latter was assassinated in 1959 as he himself was in London recovering from a suspect poisoning. Returning to Ceylon he took over the leadership of the Freedom Party, but failed to unite its different fractions and served as the opposition leader for a brief period, before engineering the defeat of the United National Party government led by Dudley Senanayake. But his bid to form a government failed as the Governor General called for fresh elections.

He succeeded in establishing Bandaranaike's widow, Sirima Bandaranaike as the party leader and gaining the party a major victory in the 1960 July general elections. Having been sidelined by Sirima Bandaranaike and her loyalists on caste lines, in December 1964 he led thirteen Freedom Party politicians to cross over to the opposition and defeating the government in parliament resulting in fresh elections which the United National Party won with the support of his new party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Socialist Party and became a minister in the national government that followed. A strong advocate of agriculture and rural development, he played a major role in many of the large agricultural development projects in the North Central Province. He lost his seat in the 1970 general election, after having served in parliament for eighteen consecutive years.