Gotabhaya Rajapaksa

Lieutenant Colonel Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa, RWP, RSP, psc, GR (Sinhalese: ගෝඨාභය රාජපක්ෂ) (born 20 June 1949) is a retired officer of the Sri Lanka Army, a former Secretary to Ministry of Defence and Urban Development 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 played a key role towards 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 with the political leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the military strategy of General Sarath Fonseka. 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..

Early life

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. 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.