Allies become rivals as Sri Lanka elects next President

By Dilrukshi Handunetti 

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka

Nearly 15 million voters will go to the polls to choose Sri Lanka's next president on Thursday. 

The island nation's voters will choose between current President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is seeking an unprecedented third term, and his former ally and health minister Maithripala Sirisena, who is backed by a coalition of Sri Lankan opposition parties. 

The last election was in 2010, soon after Rajapaksa had provided the political leadership for a military assault that crushed the separatist rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, ending almost three decades of civil war in 2009. 

Post-war reconciliation, economic development and concerns about human rights and good governance are among the issues the candidates campaigned around. 

– The Incumbent: Mahinda Rajapaksa

Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent president of the island, is a controversial figure but still considered the forerunner. 

He has been accused of human rights abuses and dynastical politics but also maintains strong support for winning the civil war and pushing through major infrastructure programs in Sri Lanka. 

His bid for a third term was made possible by the removal of a constitutional constraint that previously limited presidents two terms. 

Born on 18 November 1945 in the island’s deep south, Rajapaksa is a lawyer by profession. Elected to Sri Lankan parliament for the first time in 1970, he lost in 1977 but since his re-election in 1989, has remained undefeated.

Rajapaksa holds the island’s record as the youngest legislator, having entered parliament in 1970 at the age of 24.

The incumbent president first served as Prime Minister from April 2004 to November 2005, when he was elected president. In January 2010, he was re-elected to office.

Hailing from a well-known political family with deep links to the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), his father, D.A. Rajapaksa was a prominent politician, parliamentarian and minister.

His early years in politics were dedicated to promoting human rights. This resulted in the formation of a rights-based group, the Mothers’ Front, in the aftermath of a 1989 insurrection by the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party. 

A politician who also championed labor rights, in 1994, he was appointed Minister of Labour. In 2005, he secured victory by a narrow margin of 190,000 votes to become the island’s president.

Among his key achievements is the defeating of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a militant group that waged a war for a separate Tamil homeland. Rajapaksa’s administration has however repeatedly been accused of committing war crimes in ending the war. 

– The Rival: Maithripala Sirisena

Sri Lanka’s surprise opposition candidate, supported by a coalition of disillusioned parties, is Maithripala Sirisena.

Formerly one of Rajapaksa's allies, Sirisena left his post as health minister and General Secretary of the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party to run for president himself, sparking a series of other defections from Rajapaksa's cabinet. 

The common candidate, as he is described, has support from an unusual coalition of Marxists, Buddhist nationalists and minority parties. 

In March 2006, Sirisena's private secretary M. L. Dharmasiri was shot dead by unknown assailants. Sirisena himself survived a suicide attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in October 2008, when his convoy was attacked in Colombo, killing one person and injuring seven others. 

Sirisena, the son of Albert Sirisena, a World War II veteran from Polonnaruwa in the island’s North Central Province, had been a member of the party Sri Lanka Freedom Party since he turned 17.

Jailed during a Marxist insurrection in 1971, Sirisena had studied agriculture for three years at the Sri Lanka School of Agriculture in Kundasale, in central Sri Lanka, before obtaining a Diploma in Political Science from the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Russia.

He entered the Sri Lankan Parliament for the first time in 1989 and had held several Cabinet portfolios since 1994. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga appointed him as the Leader of the House in 2004 but he resigned in August 2005, ahead of the election that saw Rajapaksa first become president.