Gotabaya Rajapaksa

Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, RWP, RSP (Sinhala: නන්දසේන ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ; Tamil: நந்தசேன கோட்டாபய ராஜபக்ஷ; born 20 June 1949) was a Sri Lankan politician and military officer who served as the eighth President of Sri Lanka from 18 November 2019 until his resignation on 14 July 2022 amid a historic economic and political collapse. Before his presidency, he was Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development from 2005 to 2015 during the regime of his brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, playing a central role in the final phase of the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Born to a political family from the Southern Province, Rajapaksa was educated at Ananda College, Colombo and joined the Ceylon Army in April 1971. Following basic training at the Army Training Centre, Diyatalawa, he was commissioned as signals officer and later transferred to several infantry regiments. He saw active service in the early stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War with the elite Gajaba Regiment, taking part in several major offensives such as the Vadamarachi Operation, Operation Strike Hard and Operation Thrividha Balaya, as well as counter-insurgency operations during the 1987–1989 JVP insurrection.

As Defence Secretary, he oversaw the military defeat of the LTTE in 2009. He was a target of an assassination attempt in December 2006 by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.

After stepping down in 2015 following Mahinda Rajapaksa’s electoral defeat, Gotabaya returned to politics and ran for the presidency in 2019 under the SLPP. Campaigning on a nationalistic and security-heavy platform, he became the first Sri Lankan president with a military background and no prior elected office experience.

His administration mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic response and drove Sri Lanka into an economic crisis, leading the country to default on its debts in 2022. Massive shortages, inflation, and public outrage culminated in nationwide protests and civil unrest.

Rajapaksa's government responded with authoritarian crackdowns: state of emergency declarations, curfews, military-led arrests, suppression of dissent, and assaults on journalists and demonstrators. Refusing to resign for months, even as the crisis spiraled, he finally fled Sri Lanka aboard a military aircraft on 13 July 2022, entering self-imposed exile for 50 days. He officially resigned via email from Singapore the next day, becoming the first Sri Lankan president to flee the country mid-term. Rajapaksa later returned to Sri Lanka on 2 September, 2022.