[1] Perera entered politics in 1988, when he was elected to the Uva Provincial Council and served as leader of the opposition from 1993 to 1994.
[2] In February 1997, he was involved in a shooting with political rivals in which parliamentarian Nalanda Ellawala was killed.
[3] That same month, he publicly admitted that some of the LTTE soldiers and civilians who surrendered in the Sri Lankan Civil War had been killed by Armed forces.
[4] Perera was married to Saroja Sirisena, who served as Sri Lankan Ambassador to Germany and High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
This article about a politician from Uva Province, Sri Lanka is a stub.