Gotabaya Rajapaksa

Born 20 June 1949 into a political family in Sri Lanka's Southern Province, Gotabaya Rajapaksa joined the Ceylon Army in 1971 and rose through infantry regiments, seeing combat in major offensives during the civil war and counterinsurgency operations against the JVP insurrection. Appointed Defence Secretary in 2005 under his brother President Mahinda Rajapaksa, he oversaw the 2009 military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, surviving a Tamil Tiger assassination attempt in 2006. After stepping down in 2015, he returned to run for president in 2019 on a nationalistic, security-heavy platform, becoming the first president with a military background and no prior elected office. His administration mishandled the COVID-19 response and drove the country into economic default in 2022; massive shortages and inflation ignited nationwide protests met with emergency declarations, curfews, military arrests, and crackdowns on dissent. Refusing to step down as the crisis deepened, he fled aboard a military aircraft on 13 July 2022, resigned by email from Singapore the next day, spent fifty days in self-imposed exile, and returned to Sri Lanka on 2 September 2022.