Mahinda Rajapaksa

Mahinda Rajapaksa (born November 18, 1945, Weeraketiya, Sri Lanka) is a Sri Lankan politician who served as president of Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2015, during which time he oversaw the end of the country’s civil war (1983–2009), and later served as prime minister (2019–22).

Early life and political career

Rajapaksa was born into a large upper-caste family and was brought up as a Buddhist. Throughout much of his childhood, his father, D.A. Rajapaksa, served as a member of the Sri Lankan parliament, holding the Beliatta seat from 1947 to 1965. Rajapaksa did not pursue undergraduate study, but he received a law degree from Colombo Law College in 1974.

In 1970, at age 24, Rajapaksa became Sri Lanka’s youngest-ever member of Parliament when he was elected to the seat that his father had vacated just five years earlier. After losing the seat in 1977, he focused on his law career until reentering Parliament in 1989, this time representing the Hambantota district (1989–2005). Viewed as a centre-left politician, he became known as a defender of human rights—a reputation that would later be undermined during his presidency when Sri Lanka was recognized as one of the world’s most dangerous countries for dissenting journalists. Rajapaksa served as labour minister (1994–2001) and minister of fisheries and aquatic resources (1997–2001) under Pres. Chandrika Kumaratunga. In 2004 Kumaratunga appointed Rajapaksa prime minister, and the following year she announced her endorsement of him as her successor.

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Presidency

Rajapaksa was elected president in 2005 as the candidate of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). At the time, the Sri Lankan government was in the midst of ongoing peace talks and a precarious cease-fire agreement with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, the guerrilla organization that sought to establish an independent Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, Rajapaksa announced his intention in 2006 to eradicate the separatist group, which had operated as both a rebel army and a de facto government in parts of Sri Lanka for more than 20 years. In 2009 the Sri Lankan army defeated the Tamil forces, ending the country’s long civil war. Rajapaksa’s popularity surged, but international observers criticized his army’s brutality in the war’s final battle, which had led to many civilian deaths.

Throughout Rajapaksa’s presidency he worked to develop the country’s business and tourism sectors as well as its infrastructure. A key development project was a new port in his home district of Hambantota, built with aid from China. His brothers—Gotabaya, Basil, and Chamal—held prominent positions in his administration, serving respectively as secretary of defense, special adviser, and ports and aviation minister. Their support was instrumental in the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, but the concentration of one family in the country’s most powerful posts elicited charges of nepotism from the president’s detractors.

In late 2009, when he was four years into his six-year term and hoping to capitalize on his popularity following victory over the Tamil Tigers, Rajapaksa called for a presidential election in early 2010. Retired general Sarath Fonseka, who had commanded the Sri Lankan army in the final battle against the Tigers, emerged as his main opposition. In the January election Rajapaksa easily defeated Fonseka, winning 58 percent of the vote, though the general protested the results. Despite questions arising from Rajapaksa’s possible misuse of state funds for his campaign, independent observers held that no voting fraud had taken place. The following month Fonseka was arrested on charges of corruption and of engaging in political activity while on active military duty. Immediately following the arrest, Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament in advance of early parliamentary elections. The vote, held in early April, gave the UPFA a strong majority of seats in Parliament. Although the UPFA failed to secure the two-thirds majority necessary to amend the constitution, in September an amendment was approved by Parliament, with the support of some opposition members, that removed limits on the number of terms a president could serve, granted judicial immunity to the president, and gave the president broader powers in making governmental appointments.

Rajapaksa’s second term oversaw sustained economic growth, and he continued to enjoy the strong support of the large Sinhalese majority in the country. However, his administration became increasingly associated with strong-arm tactics and other repressive measures against political opponents and civil rights advocates. In addition, relations with Western countries were strained over Sri Lanka’s refusal to allow independent investigations of the military’s treatment of Tamils at the end of the civil war in 2009. Though the economy was growing, many observers worried that the rapid increase in national debt and the reliance on foreign investment would turn into a debt trap for the country. Rajapaksa’s domestic popularity appeared to wane during 2014 because of rising prices and concerns of corruption and abuse of power, and, in an attempt to secure another presidential term before losing support, he again called for an early presidential election. The poll, in early January 2015, proved to be an upset, as Maithripala Sirisena, formerly a member of the cabinet, defeated Rajapaksa and was sworn in as president. Later that year Parliament restored a constitutional two-term limit on the presidency, precluding Rajapaksa from running again. In August Rajapaksa was elected to Parliament, representing the Kurunegala district.

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Post-presidency and premiership

In October 2018 Sirisena fired his prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and attempted to appoint Rajapaksa in his place. Wickremesinghe challenged the move as unconstitutional. When it became clear that Parliament would not approve Rajapaksa’s appointment, Sirisena dissolved the legislative body in early November. The Supreme Court intervened, suspending the dissolution until it could rule on its legality. Parliament passed two votes of no confidence against Rajapaksa in the days that followed, but Rajapaksa’s allies rejected the legality of the votes. In December the Supreme Court ruled that Sirisena could not dissolve Parliament, and Rajapaksa stepped down to avoid further stalemate. Meanwhile, Rajapaksa and his supporters in Parliament defected from the ruling party and joined the Sri Lanka Podujana Peremuna (SLPP) party, founded by his brother Basil, and Mahinda formally became leader of the opposition.

His political fortunes improved in 2019, after Easter morning explosions that killed hundreds put many Sri Lankans on edge about the country’s security. For many Sinhalese, Rajapaksa offered promise for security amid fears of renewed violence in the country. As the presidential election slated for November approached, the SLPP announced the presidential candidacy of his brother Gotabaya, who had served as his hawkish defense minister in the final years of the civil war. Mahinda was made party leader the same day, setting him up as a contender for the office of prime minister. Carrying the vote of the Sinhalese majority, Gotabaya won the presidential election. Wickremesinghe resigned from the premiership days later, and Mahinda became prime minister in his stead on November 21, 2019.

The Rajapaksas initially maintained an image of security and stability in 2020 as the global coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 pandemic took hold, especially as Sri Lanka reported much lower rates of infection and death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, than other South Asian countries. Mahinda sought to capitalize on that image to increase the SLPP’s number of parliamentary seats in the legislative elections scheduled for August 5—twice delayed because of the pandemic—with the purpose of enabling the party and its allies to amend the constitution and expand the powers of the presidency.

However, due to the brothers’ economic policies, that image failed to be sustained. Steep tax cuts, which were intended in part to spur investment and were implemented just before the pandemic, ballooned the country’s deficit. A sudden and draconian ban on the importation of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in 2021 resulted in a food shortage, exacerbating the challenges brought on by a global bottleneck in supply chains. Matters came to a head in early 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to fuel shortages. Nationwide protests broke out in March and continued in the weeks ahead. In April the country’s ministers, including Mahinda’s brother Basil and son Namal, resigned en masse in an attempt to reshuffle the cabinet and form a unity government, but the move failed to placate the opposition—which continued to grow as members of the ruling coalition defected—and Mahinda’s future as prime minister looked bleak. Sustained unrest led him to resign in May.