Mahinda Rajapaksa

Biography

Mahinda Rajapaksa was born in 1945 into a political family in southern Sri Lanka and attended Richmond College in Galle, Nalanda College and Thurstan College in Colombo. After working as a library assistant and union official, he became Sri Lanka Freedom Party organiser for Beliatta in 1968 in place of his late father, and in 1970, aged 24, was elected the country's youngest MP. He studied at Sri Lanka Law College while in parliament.

Losing his seat in 1977, he practised criminal law until returning to parliament in 1989, when he campaigned on behalf of families of those who disappeared during the JVP insurrection. He served as minister of labour from 1994 and of fisheries from 1997, became leader of the opposition in 2002 and prime minister in April 2004.

Elected president in 2005, he also kept the defence and finance ministries. His government crushed the Tamil Tigers in 2009, ending the civil war amid allegations of war crimes, and he won a second term in 2010 before abolishing presidential term limits. Accusations of authoritarianism, nepotism and corruption mounted, and he lost the 2015 election to his former minister Maithripala Sirisena.

Sirisena's controversial appointment of him as prime minister in October 2018 set off a constitutional crisis that ended with his resignation in December. After his brother Gotabaya won the presidency, he was prime minister again from 2019 until 9 May 2022, when he resigned during mass protests over the economic collapse after his supporters attacked demonstrators. He did not stand in the 2024 elections.