Word: rajapaksa
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President Mahinda Rajapaksa - Sri Lanka's self-described "rebel with a cause" - extended his four decades in politics with a landslide victory on Jan. 27 in the country's first election since the end of its 26-year civil war. Upending predictions that the contest would be a close fight, Rajapaksa easily beat his challenger, General Sarath Fonseka - a former ally in Sri Lanka's military victory over the separatist Tamil Tigers - with 57.9% of the vote. Though he was hailed by many members of Sri Lanka's ethnic Sinhalese majority for emerging victorious from the decades-long conflict with...
...Married to Shiranthi Rajapaksa; the couple has three sons...
...Rajapaksa] has liberated this country." - O.K. Dingininya, 85, a resident of Medamulana, who insisted on voting - for the first time in 15 years - despite being barely able to walk (Reuters...
...President keeps his promises. I hope that he will be a savior for Sri Lanka." - Gamage Banduwathie, a former member of the opposition United National Party, who left to support Rajapaksa in the election (The New York Times...
...deal effectively with burning Tamil grievances that led to over two and a half decades of bloodshed, Rajapaksa needs "to do something that no president has done so far," says Terrence Purasinghe, a senior lecturer at the Sri Jayawardenapura University in Colombo. "He will have to bring the minority Tamils into a position of political power, where they have some sense of control and not controlled by the center." Rajapaksa pledged to look at power sharing during the campaign, and Sri Lanka's Tamils are waiting to see whether those promises will be fulfilled. And the standoff outside the Cinnamon...