Music to Vote By

Politics are normally wild in Ceylon. Last week they were even wilder than usual. The world's only woman head of government, Mrs. Solomen West Ridgeway Dias Bandaranaike, who has ruled Ceylon since 1960, when her husband was assassinated, felt upset when her election speech on the government-controlled radio was followed by the playing of Beethoven's funereal "Pathetique" Sonata. The radio director responsible was sent on "compulsory leave," with no reasons given. The opposition cracked that "classical music was undoubtedly too good a sequel" to Mrs. Bandaranaike's oratory, but jittery disk jockeys began fine-combing their collections for all sorts of song titles that might sound derogatory, such as I Kiss Your Hand, Madame, The Lady Is a Tramp and Bye Bye Blues--since blue is the official color of her Freedom Party.

With a general election ahead, Ceylon's leader has every reason to be edgy. Mrs. Bandaranaike is contesting her late husband's old seat at Attana-galla, near Colombo, and while she may keep a place in Parliament, she may well lose her prime-ministership. Labor strikes and a binge of nationalization have crippled the economy. Last summer she tried to prop up her unstable government by forming an alliance with the island's Trotskyites, who received three Cabinet portfolios, including the Finance Ministry.

"Stab in the Back." Minister of Lands Charles Percival de Silva, 52, who had helped found the Freedom Party, protested the admission of the Trotskyites, but reported that Mrs. Bandaranaike assured him "she wouldn't change the policies of her husband by so much as the width of the stamen of a mustard flower." When the Trotskyite support was followed by that of the pro-Moscow Communist Party, De Silva had enough. With 13 other Freedom rebels, he bolted to the opposition, causing the government to fall last month by only a single vote.

Mrs. Bandaranaike, who stayed on as caretaker chief of the government, denounced the defection as a "stab in the back." De Silva explained that he felt she "was going to betray Ceylon to the Marxists." Ceylon's influential Buddhist monks, alarmed by the Marxist infiltration, began turning against the buxom Prime Minister. They particularly denounced a proposal, put forward by the Communists in the government, to permit the legal tapping of coconut trees and turn the sap into toddy, thus heading off illicit bootlegging and bringing new revenue into the treasury. When Mrs. Bandaranaike tried to win back the monks, who practice temperance, by promising to make Buddhism Ceylon's official religion, they refused for fear of coming under state control.

Best Date. In the general election scheduled for March, De Silva and his rebels will run as independents but in coalition with the two major opposition parties. One is Dudley Senanayake's conservative United National Party; the other, a group representing the Tamil-speaking Hindu minority--almost a quarter of Ceylon's 10.6 million people. Mrs. Bandaranaike sees one basic issue in the coming election. In her first campaign speech, she said Ceylon had a democratic tradition of only 16 years. The first eight years she characterized as "the period of capitalism, when this country was not only closely linked to the British crown but to the British economy." Since then, under her husband and herself, Ceylon has followed "the middle path to socialism, within the British parliamentary system." It was up to the voters to choose "between the two systems."

Though running scared, Mrs. Bandaranaike is far from weaponless. She has threatened to nationalize all of Ceylon's newspapers, and has so far refused the opposition the use of the government-controlled radio. Officials have announced that no voters will be al lowed to travel to the polls in private cars; they will probably have to go either on foot or in buses--and the government owns the bus line.

Finally, Mrs. Bandaranaike conferred with her astrologers, who after deep cerebration advised her that the most propitious date for the election would be March 22, and so that is when it will be. Explained a Ceylonese politician, "You know, even those of us who don't believe in such things turn to the astrologers when we're in a tight spot. Somehow, we hope to find a way out."

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