Mahinda Rajapaksa

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Mahinda Rajapaksa is a Sri Lankan politician of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and a lawyer. He has served as the President as well as the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. He is the elder brother of the 8th President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled Sri Lanka amidst the Sri Lankan crisis in 2022.At the beginning of the 1960s, Mahinda Rajapaksa joined the University of Sri Jayewardenepura as an assistant librarian. At the university, he read several left-wing political pieces of literature and aligned himself with the leftist ideology.When Mahinda Rajapaksa was working as an assistant librarian, he joined the Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU).In 1967, after Mahinda Rajapaksa became the branch secretary of the Ceylon Mercantile Union, he resigned as a librarian.After the death of his father in 1968, Mahinda Rajapaksa was offered his father’s post as a party organiser in the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).In 1970, Mahinda Rajapaksa contested his first Sri Lankan general elections against the UNP leader Dr Ranjit Atapattu from the Beliatta constituency. Mahinda entered the Sri Lankan parliament after defeating Ranjit Atapattu by 6,626 votes. An electoral poster of Mahinda Rajapaksa printed in 1970.Mahinda Rajapaksa served as a member of the parliament from 1970 to 1977; however, despite winning the elections, he was not given a portfolio in the ruling government and remained a backbencher (an MP who does not hold any appointment in the governing party).Mahinda Rajapaksa once again contested the 1977 general elections in Sri Lanka from the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SLFP) from the Beliatta constituency, where he lost to his UNP rival, Dr Ranjit Atapattu.In 1989, Mahinda Rajapaksa once again entered the Sri Lankan parliament from the Hambantota constituency after winning the general elections.After getting elected to the parliament, Mahinda Rajapaksa demanded an intervention of international organisations like the United Nations (UN) and Amnesty International in Sri Lanka to investigate and curb the alleged human rights violations being perpetrated by the UNP-led Sri Lankan government during the Janatha Vimukthi Peramunap (JVP) insurrection from 1987 to 1989. Talking about it, Mahinda said, If the government is going to deny human rights, we should go not only to Geneva, but to any place in the world, or to hell if necessary, and act against the government sponsored human rights violations. The lamentation of this country’s innocents should be raised anywhere.”.