| Gotabaya Rajapaksa ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ |
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|---|---|
| Born | Matara, Sri Lanka |
| Allegiance | Sri Lanka |
| Service/branch | Sri Lankan Army |
| Years of service | 1971–1992 |
| Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
| Unit | Gajaba Regiment |
| Commands held | 1st Gajaba Regiment General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University |
| Battles/wars | Eelam War I Eelam War II Eelam War IV |
| Awards | Rana Wickrama Padakkama Rana Sura Padakkama Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa), UoC |
| Relations | Mahinda Rajapaksa (brother) Basil Rajapaksa (brother) Chamal Rajapaksa (brother) |
| Other work | Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Sri Lanka |
Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, RWP, RSP, psc, GR (Sinhala: ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ) (born 20 June 1949) is a retired officer of the Sri Lanka Army and the current Defence Secretary of Sri Lanka. After serving through the early parts of the country's civil war with Tamil Tiger rebels, he retired from the Army in 1992. With the election of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa as President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was appointed Defence Secretary in November 2005.
As Defence Secretary, Rajapaksa is largely credited with masterminding the successes achieved by the Sri Lankan Military in defeating the Tamil Tigers and ending Sri Lanka's 26 year long civil war in May 2009. He was also one of the top targets of the Tamil Tigers, and survived an assassination attempt in December 2006 by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber.[1]
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Gotabaya Rajapaksa was born in Palatuwa in the Matara District, as the 5th of nine siblings and brought up in Weerakatiya in the southern rural district of Hambantota. According to a writer called Narada Karunthilaka, the name Gotabaya means "Abhaya, the Giant" or "Chinna Kotta" in the Jat language.[2] 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,Deputy Speaker and Cabinet Minister of Agriculture and Land in Wijeyananda Dahanayake's government. His elder brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa was first elected to parliament as a member of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party at the age of 24 in 1970, who gradually rose through the party ranks becoming the Leader of the Opposition in 2001, Prime Minister in 2004 and the President of Sri Lanka in 2005. Two of his other elder brothers, Chamal Rajapaksa and Basil Rajapaksa, are also in the politics being current Members of Parliament.
He obtained his primary and secondary education at Ananda College, Colombo.
Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lanka Army as a Cadet Officer on April 26, 1971 , when Sri Lanka was still a dominion of the British Commonwealth. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on May 25, 1972 and given his first command as an officer in the Ceylon Signals Corps after his basic training at the Army Training Centre, Diyatalawa. Thereafter he served with in the Sri Lanka Sinha Regiment and the Rajarata Rifles before being transferred to the Gajaba Regiment upon its formation in 1983 with the amalgamation of the Rajarata Rifles and Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment.[3]
During his 20 years of military service, Rajapaksa has received awards for gallantry from three Presidents of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and D.B. Wijetunga.[4] He had followed signal young officers course in school of signals at Rawalpindi; Infantry company commanders course in Queta; Jungle warfare and counter insurgency course in Assam; Command and Staff course at Defence Services Staff College in Welington; and Advanced Infantry Officers course at Fort Benning.
He rose up the ranks in the military, serving as the second in command of the 1st Gajaba Regiment and latter commanding the 1GR from 1983 - 1990. He served in the battlefronts of Jaffna, participating in Operation Liberation, the offensive mounted to liberate Vadamarachi from LTTE in 1987. He also commanded the same battalion in Operation "Strike Hard" and Operation "Thrivida Balaya" in 1990. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and served as the Commandant of the Kotelawala Defence Academy at the time of his retirement in 1992. He subsequently migrated to the United States.
In order to assist his brother's Presidential election campaign, Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka in 2005 from the United States.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa was appointed to the post of Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence in November 2005 by newly elected President Mahinda Rajapaksa. In this capacity he oversaw the military operation which eventually defeated the LTTE in May, 2009 after 25 years of fighting.
At the public acclaim as a "war hero," he was conferred Doctor of Letters by the University of Colombo on September 6, 2009.[5]
On December 1, 2006, at approximately 10:35 an assassin attempted to drive an explosive laden auto-rikshaw into Rajapaksa's motorcade as it traveled through Kollupitiya, Colombo. The Sri Lanka Army Commandos guarding him obstructed the vehicle carrying the explosives before it reached Rajapakse's vehicle and two commandos were instantly killed. Rajapaksa escaped unhurt.[1] The LTTE were blamed for the attack.[1]
In June 2007, Rajapaksa was severely critical of the UN in Sri Lanka and of western governments. He accused the UN in Sri Lanka of having been infiltrated by terrorists "for 30 years or so", and as a result the UN was fed incorrect information. He also alleged that Britain and the EU were bullying Sri Lanka, and concluded that Sri Lanka "does not need them", and that they don't provide any significant amount of aid to the country. Rajapaksa has also been accused to have connections to Lasantha Wickrematunge assassination with who he was locked in a legal battle where he was suing Wickrematunge's business for 2 billion Rs[6]
The former LTTE commander Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharan, better known as Colonel Karuna, told British authorities that Rajapaksa was instrumental in arranging for him to be issued with a false diplomatic passport so that he could flee to Britain in September 2007. These allegations were denied by the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohita Bogollogama at the time,[7] and later by Rajapaksa.
Rajapaksa has been accused of threatening journalists on several occasions, including telling two journalists attached to the state-owned Lake House Publications that unless they stop criticising the armed forces "what will happen to you is beyond my control". When asked by the two journalists if he was threatening them, he replied "I am definitely not threatening your lives. Our services are appreciated by 99 per cent of the people. They love the Army Commander (General Sarath Fonseka) and the Army. There are Sri Lankan patriots who love us do and will do what is required if necessary."[8] In April 2007 he was accused of allegedly calling the Editor of the Daily Mirror Champika Liyanaarachchi and threatening her, saying that she would escape reprisals only if she resigned.[9] He was also accused for threatening to "exterminate" the Daily Mirror journalist Uditha Jayasinghe for writing articles about the plight of civilian war casualties. Rajapaksa denied these claims.
A December 5, 2008 story from The New York Times quoted his news reporting position as "he insists that journalists should not be allowed to report anything that demoralizes the war effort.".[10]
In the editorial titled A brother out of control (August 16, 2011), The Hindu raised the observation, "President Rajapaksa would be well advised to distance himself swiftly from his brother's stream-of-consciousness on sensitive issues that are not his business. This includes an outrageous comment that because a Tamil woman, an “LTTE cadre” who was a British national, interviewed in the Channel 4 documentary was “so attractive” but had been neither raped nor killed by Sri Lankan soldiers, the allegation of sexual assault by soldiers could not be true. For this statement alone, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa must be taken to task."[11]