Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa is a Sri Lankan politician and a former military officer who served as the eighth President of Sri Lanka from 2019 to 2022. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was born into a renowned political family from the Southern Province. He previously served as Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development from 2005 to 2015 under the government of his elder brother, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, leading the Sri Lankan Armed Forces to the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers, which ended the Sri Lankan Civil War.
He took early retirement from the army and worked in the field of information technology before he relocated to the United States in 1998. Gotabaya Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka in 2005, to aid his brother in his presidential campaign.
Net worth of Gotabaya Rajapaksa
The estimated net worth of the eighth President of Sri Lanka is $10 million. The president of Sri Lanka was criticized for his wealth after the country went through an economic crisis that led to protests all over the country.
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Family Life
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is from a prominent Sri Lankan political family. His father, D.A. Rajapaksa, was a well-known politician, parliamentarian, and activist for independence. He was also the Minister of Agriculture and Land in Wijeyananda Dahanayake’s cabinet. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was born as the fifth of nine siblings in Palatuwa, Matara District. He was raised in the Weeraketiya neighborhood of Hambantota’s Southern Rural District.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is married to Ioma, who holds a Diploma in Business Management from NIBM, Sri Lanka, and worked as a Medical Coder in the United States. They have a son named Manjor Rajapaksa.
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Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Career
Gotabaya Rajapaksa entered the Sri Lankan Army as a cadet officer on April 26, 1971, while Sri Lanka was still a British Commonwealth dominion and in the midst of the 1971 JVP uprising.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa studied for a master’s diploma in information technology at Colombo University and entered informatics in 1992, following his retirement. He immigrated to the United States in 1998 and worked as a systems integrator and Unix Solaris Administrator at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, California.
In 2018, Gotabaya Rajapaksa surfaced as a potential candidate for the 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election, which he successfully contested. In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa became the first President of Sri Lanka who had been in the military and who had never held an elected position before.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa obtained a majority in the largely Sinhalese districts of Matara, Galle, Kalutara, and Badulla, whilst the opposition candidate Sajith Premadasa earned a majority in the areas controlled by Tamil and Muslim minorities, which had been impacted by the Civil War.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa notified the Speaker of Parliament on July 9, 2022, that he would resign as President on July 13, 2022.
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Nandasena Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s Awards
During his twenty years of duty in the military, he received medals from three Sri Lankan presidents: J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa, and D.B. Wijetunga. These include the gallantry medals, Rana Wickrama Padakkama and Rana Sura Padakkama, service medals, and campaign medals. He was given the Eastern Humanitarian Operations Medal and the Northern Humanitarian Operations Medal while he was Defense Secretary.
