By Dayan Candappa
COLOMBO, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who became Sri Lanka’s first woman president in 1994, is not a candidate in the country’s parliamentary elections on December 5 but her record has never been under closer scrutiny.

A daughter of two prime ministers, Kumaratunga has an impeccable political pedigree and is without peer among Sri Lanka’s top politicians on the campaign trail.

Personally more popular than her People’s Alliance coalition, Kumaratunga’s charisma remains a force to be reckoned with and she can still charm her way around irritations about her notorious unpunctuality with a joke or disarming smile.

But Kumaratunga has bitter critics, including several high profile defectors from her Peoples’ Alliance and the campaign has turned into a her-versus-them contest, even though she will remain president regardless of the outcome of the vote.

It took Kumaratunga less than two years to move from a provincial chief minister, to prime minister and finally to first citizen in November 1994 — a meteoric rise propelled by pledges of negotiated peace, equitable prosperity and democratic governance.

"Seven years is too short a time to accomplish all these," Kumaratunga tells an electorate frustrated by a stalemated 18-year ethnic war, an economy that is growing at its slowest pace in 30 years and relentless political turmoil.

For Kumaratunga, a fluent francophone from her days as a student of political science in Paris, peace has been her most elusive pursuit.