Who is Mahinda Rajapaksa?

Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa won re-election, Wednesday (27/1), although the announcement was a victory of opposition from other candidates of General Sarath Fonseka.

Election Commission of Sri Lanka states, Rajapaksa collecting 57.8 percent from 10.4 million votes contested. Instead Fonseka, Rajapaksa colleagues in the civil war ended over 25 years in Sri Lanka to face Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, collecting 40.2 percent. "Mahinda Rajapaksa has won the presidential election," says Chief Election Commission of Sri Lanka Dayananda Dissanayake.

Rajapaksa was born in Weerakatiya in the southern rural district of Hambantota. He hails from a well known political family in Sri Lanka. His father, D. A. Rajapaksa, was a prominent politician, independence agitator, Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister of Agriculture and Land in Wijeyananda Dahanayake's government. D.M. Rajapaksa, his uncle, was a State Councillor for Hambantota in the 1930s who started wearing the earthy brown shawl to represent kurakkan (finger millet) cultivated by the people of his area, whose cause he championed throughout his life. It is from his example that Rajapaksa wears his characteristic shawl.

Rajapaksa was educated at Richmond College, Galle before moving to Nalanda College Colombo and later Thurstan College, Colombo. He also had a few cameo roles as a movie actor in Sinhalese movies and worked as a library assistant at Vidyodaya University.

Following the death of his father in 1967, Rajapaksa took over as the SLFP candidate for Beliatta constituency and was elected to Parliament in 1970 as the youngest Member of Parliament at the age of 24. Later he studied law at the Sri Lanka Law College and took oaths as an attorney-at-law in November 1977. Throughout his parliamentary career, except for the period from 1994-2001 when he was a minister, he continued his law practice in Tangalle.

He lost his parliamentary seat in the landslide defeat of the SLFP in 1977. During the 1985 by-election campaign in the Mulkirigala electorate in Hambantota district, for which his brother Chamal Rajapaksa contested representing the SLFP, during this time Mahinda was remanded for allegations of possession of unauthorized fire arms, but he was cleared of charges due to lack of evidence.

In 1989 he was re-elected to Parliament to represent Hambantota District under Proportional Representation. He came into prominence as a leader, together with Manorani Saravanamuttu, of the Mothers Front, which organised the mothers of the "disappeared" in the white terror of 1988-90 instigated by a rebel group that called themselves Deshapremi Jathika Vyaparaya or 'Patriotic National Movement'

Percy Mahendra Rajapaksa; known as Mahinda Rajapaksa (born November 18, 1945) is the 6th and current President of Sri Lanka and Commander in Chief of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces. A lawyer by profession, Rajapaksa was first elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka in 1970, and served as prime minister from April 6, 2004 until his victory in the 2005 Presidential election. He was sworn in for a six-year term as president on November 19, 2005. He was re-elected for a second term in office on January 27, 2010. He was conferred with Doctor of Law by the University of Colombo on September 6, 2009. (rainbowdiplomacy.com/wikipedia/photo:thehindu.com)