Gotabaya Rajapaksa

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Gotabaya Rajapaksa (2014)

Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa ( Sinhalese ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ , Tamil கோத்தாபய ராஜபக்ச ; born June 20, 1949 in Palatuwa, Matara district ) is a politician from Sri Lanka . On November 16, 2019, he won the presidential election and was sworn in as head of state on November 18. In addition to Sri Lankan citizenship , he also held United States citizenship , but relinquished it in 2018 in order to qualify for Sri Lanka's presidential candidacy.

He comes from a politically active family. His father Don Alwin Rajapaksa (1905–1967) was a member of parliament and a minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Vijayananda Dahanayake , his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was the sixth President of Sri Lanka from 2005 to January 2015. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was the fifth of a total of nine children and grew up in Weerakatiya in the Hambantota district . He received his education at Ananda College in Colombo and then studied military science at the University of Madras , where he received a master's degree in 1983. This was followed by postgraduate studies in information technology at the University of Colombo , which he completed with a diploma.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lankan Army in 1971 and completed officer training. During the Sri Lankan civil war , he was in the 1980s and 1990s several times with military commands. In 1998 he and his family moved to California, where he worked as a systems administrator at Loyola Law School . After his brother Mahinda won the presidential election in Sri Lanka in 2005 , he became Sri Lanka's Defense Minister in November 2005. After President Mahinda Rajapaksa was voted out of office on January 8, 2015, Gotabaya Rajapaksa lost his position as Minister of Defense on January 12, 2015 to the new President Maithripala Sirisena .

During his tenure as defense minister, Rajapaksa was charged with war crimes, torture and the disappearances of unpopular journalists, which he denied. On November 18, 2011, a court sentenced Sarath Fonseka , a general who moved into politics after the civil war and who ran against Mahinda Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election, to three years in prison. He was charged with making false accusations against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, "spreading rumors and causing public disorder". Fonseka had claimed in an interview that Gotabaya Rajapaksa ordered the execution of surrendering Tamil rebels in May 2009 .

In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was civilly indicted in the United States by a victim of torture and the daughter of the murdered journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge .

Gotabaya Rajapaksa has been seen by many observers as a possible candidate in the 2019 presidential election . His brother, ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa, was not allowed to run again due to the term limit, so that the hopes of the Rajapaksa supporters focused on Gotabaya Rajapaksa. On April 26, 2019, he publicly announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election. On August 11, 2019, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party, led by his brother Mahinda, elected him as its candidate in the upcoming presidential election.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The Return of the Warlord: A Sri Lankan hardliner feels a tailwind after the attacks on Easter. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. June 5, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Biography. Gotabaya Rajapaksa personal website, accessed November 17, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Sri Lanka's new president names 100-day cabinet before polls. In: Reuters. January 12, 2015, accessed January 14, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Sri Lanka's ex-army chief sentenced to three years in prison. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. November 18, 2011, accessed November 18, 2011 .
  5. ↑ Sri Lankans Accuse Him of Wartime Atrocities. California May Decide. In: New York Times. April 19, 2019, accessed June 5, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Anbarasan Ethirajan: Gotabhaya Rajapaksa: The wartime strongman who wants to run Sri Lanka. BBC News, June 30, 2019, accessed June 30, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez: Exclusive: Sri Lankan ex-defense chief Gotabaya says he will run for president, tackle radical Islam. Reuters, April 26, 2019, accessed on September 21, 2019 .
  8. ↑ SLPP names Gotabhaya Rajapaksa as presidential candidate. colombopage.com, August 11, 2019, accessed October 14, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Rajapaksa, Gotabaya
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rajapaksa, Gotabhaya; ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ (Sinhala); கோத்தாபய ராஜபக்ச (Tamil)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sri Lankan politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Palatuwa, Matara District