Anura Yapa new Media Minister
 

by Jayasinghe Premarathna

Anura Priyadarshana Yapa, Kurunegala District MP and a senior Minister of the SLFP took oaths as the new Information and Media Minister yesterday before President Mahinda Rajapakse.

On an earlier occasion too Yapa held the Media portfolio. He is widely viewed as a media friendly politician with a disarming affability and humility.

An old boy of Iriyagolla MV and Saranath MV, Kuliyapitiya and Nalanda College, Colombo Yapa joined the Colombo Law College and subsequently graduated as an Attorney-at-Law. He was elected as the Secretary of the Colombo Law College Sahithya Sangamaya in 1980.

Yapa practised as a lawyer in Kuliyapitiya until he took to politics in 1979. He became the SLFP Organiser of Katugampola in 1984.

He contested the 1988 Katugampola by election and in 1993 was elected a Councillor of the NWP with the highest number of preferential votes. He became Health and Women's Affairs Minister of the NWP in 1993 and entered Parliament at the 1994 General Elections .

In 1997 he was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Media, Posts and Telecommunications and became the Minister of Media in 2000. In 2001 he was appointed the Deputy Minister of Education and Higher Education.

Since 2004 he has been functioning as the Plantations Minister until he was appointed as the new Information and Media Minister yesterday.

Mr. Yapa, a nephew of the late I. M. R. A. Iriyagolla, the famous Sinhala writer and a former Minister of Education once functioned as a Vice President of the Kuliyapitiya Lions Club.