Gotabaya Rajapaksa

Gotabaya Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lanka Army as a Cadet Officer on April 26, 1971. He served as 2nd in command of the 1st Gajaba Regiment and commanded 1GR from 1983 to 1990. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, he served as the Commandant of the Kotelawala Defence Academy till retirement in 1992. Thereafter he migrated to the United States and worked at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, USA. until his return to Sri Lanka in 2005. He was appointed as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence in November 2005 where he served until January 2015. In this capacity he oversaw the military operation which eventually defeated the terrorist organization LTTE in May, 2009. He was conferred Doctor of Letters by the University of Colombo on September 6, 2009. Concurrently he served as Secretary of Ministry of Urban Development during which period the urban landscape of Sri Lanka was dramatically transformed with large scale development projects, to bring Sri Lanka on par with developed nations.