{"id":95294,"date":"2019-11-17T07:13:38","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T14:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=95294"},"modified":"2019-11-17T07:13:38","modified_gmt":"2019-11-17T14:13:38","slug":"10-facts-about-sri-lankas-new-president-you-perhaps-didnt-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/11\/17\/10-facts-about-sri-lankas-new-president-you-perhaps-didnt-know\/","title":{"rendered":"10 Facts About Sri Lanka\u2019s New President You Perhaps Didn\u2019t Know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nitin A. Gokhale Courtesy\u00a0 Strategic News International<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a>
Gotabaya Rajapaksa secured over 52 per cent of votes cast in Sri Lanka\u2019s presidential election.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
NEW DELHI: <\/strong>As Gotabaya Rajapaksa prepares to take over as Sri Lanka\u2019s seventh Executive President on Monday, SNI Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale, who has known and interacted with the President-elect while reporting on Eelam War IV (2006-2009) and in subsequent years, brings out some fascinating and little known facts about the man who will lead the island nation for the next five years:<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
  1. Gotabaya joined the Sri Lankan Army in April 1971 as a cadet officer.<\/li>
  2. He was commissioned in the Signals Regiment and sent for the Young Officers\u2019 course to Rawalpindi in Pakistan.<\/li>
  3. On his return, his first posting in the SL Army was Palaly in northern Sri Lanka.<\/li>
  4. In October 1974, Gotabaya opted to move to the infantry, joining the Sinha Regiment. Later, he was tasked with raising the Gajaba Regiment and commanded the 1st<\/sup> Gajaba Battalion.<\/li>
  5. In 1983, he completed the Staff Officers Course at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, near Ooty, in India.<\/li>
  6. Then Lt Col (now Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka), commanding the 1st<\/sup> Sinha Battalion and Gotabaya, as Commanding Officer of the 1st<\/sup> Gajaba Battalion, launched a combined operation to rescue Sri Lankan Army soldiers from the besieged Jaffna Fort, surrounded by the LTTE.<\/li>
  7. The current Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, Lt Gen Shavendra Silva, has served under Gotabaya in the 1st<\/sup> Gajaba Battalion as a young officer.<\/li>
  8. Gotabaya quit the Army in November 1991 and migrated to the United States.<\/li>
  9. He returned to Sri Lanka to help his elder brother Mahinda\u2019s election campaign in 2005 and stayed on to become Defence Secretary and play a pivotal role in Eelam War IV to end the Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka.<\/li>
  10. Gotabaya is a devout Buddhist and a vegetarian.<\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Nitin A. Gokhale Courtesy\u00a0 Strategic News International NEW DELHI: As Gotabaya Rajapaksa prepares to take over as Sri Lanka\u2019s seventh Executive President on Monday, SNI Editor-in-Chief Nitin A. Gokhale, who has known and interacted with the President-elect while reporting on Eelam War IV (2006-2009) and in subsequent years, brings out some fascinating and little known facts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}