US embassy cable - 05COLOMBO1981

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 COLOMBO 001981 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/20/2015 
TAGS: PINR, PGOV, CE, current biographies, Elections, Political Parties 
SUBJECT: SRI LANKA:  BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ON PRESIDENT 
MAHINDA RAJAPAKSE 
 
REF: A. COLOMBO 1853 
 
     B. COLOMBO 1975 
 
Classified By: AMB. JEFFREY J. LUNSTEAD.  REASON:  1.4 (B,D). 
 
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MEET THE NEW BOSS 
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1.  (SBU) Percy Mahendra (aka "Mahinda") Rajapakse was sworn 
in as Sri Lanka's fifth President on November 18, 2005--his 
60th birthday.  Like his predecessor and rival Chandrika 
Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, Rajapakse has the Sri Lanka Freedom 
Party (SLFP) in his blood, with his father, D.A. Rajapakse, 
joining Chandrika's father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to form the 
SLFP in 1951, and an uncle serving as a Cabinet Minister in 
the 1970 government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika's 
mother.  With his sterling SLFP credentials and with a 
brother and cousin also involved in politics--and with three 
young sons possibly contemplating political careers as 
well--Rajapakse is widely considered to represent the only 
real challenge to the Bandaranaike family's dynastic grip on 
the party.  The left-of-center economic policies endorsed in 
his campaign manifesto, as well as the quasi-nationalist 
sentiment in his anti-federalist stand on the peace process 
(Ref A), may reflect a conscious effort by Rajapakse to move 
the party away from the centrist positions espoused by 
Kumaratunga over her 11 years as president and back toward 
its original Sinhalese socialist roots.  Rajapakse has a 
reputation for astutely outflanking domestic political 
rivals--his longevity within the corrosively internecine SLFP 
bears indirect testimony to this talent--but his experience 
on the international stage is limited.  Although clearly 
indebted to the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) for his 
narrow victory at the November 17 presidential polls, 
Rajapakse will likely try to limit the former Marxists' 
influence in his administration.  How successful he is in 
doing so will be one of the most important tests of his 
legendary political savvy. 
 
 
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SOUTHERN STRENGTH: 
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL 
---------------------- 
 
2.  (SBU) Hailing from a politically prominent family from 
the southeastern district of Hambantota, Rajapakse is the 
first Sri Lankan president not from Colombo or its environs. 
(Late President Ranasinghe Premadasa's family is from the 
south, but he himself grew up in and was elected from 
Colombo.)  Rajapakse identifies strongly with his rural 
southern Buddhist base (which, incidentally, is the same base 
eyed by the JVP), even though his family's wealth, education 
and political prominence obviously distinguish him from the 
typical Sinhalese farmer.  With southern Sinhalese voters, 
the admiration appears to be mutual; Rajapakse won handy 
majorities in the six southern districts of Kalutara, Galle, 
Ratnapura, Moneragala, Kurunegala, Hambantota and Matara. 
 
 
 
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JUST A COUNTRY LAWYER 
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3.  (U) Percy Mahinda Rajapakse was born on November 18, 1945 
in Verukatiya, Hambantota District, the third of SLFP 
founder-member D.A. Rajapakse's eight children.  (An older 
brother Chamal is also an SLFP MP, while two younger 
brothers, Godabhaya and Basil, had been living in the U.S. 
but returned to help with their brother's campaign for the 
presidency.)  He was educated at Richmond College in the 
southern district of Galle (where his father reportedly had 
to engage a Sinhala tutor to boost his son's proficiency in 
his native tongue), as well as Nalanda College and Thurstan 
College in Colombo.  He did not complete his Advanced Level 
("A levels") education, instead leaving his job as a clerk at 
the library at Sri Jayawarendapura University in the Colombo 
suburbs in 1970 to run for his late father's seat 
representing his native Hambantota in Parliament.  When he 
won at the age of 24, he became the youngest MP in Sri 
Lanka's history to enter Parliament--a record that still 
stands.  Taking advantage of a decision by the then-Justice 
Minister to allow MPs to enter law school--whether or not 
they had the necessary educational qualifications--Rajapakse 
graduated from Sri Lanka Law College in 1974. 
 
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DEFENDER OF JVP MISSING 
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4.  (C)  Rajapakse lost his seat, along with many of his SLFP 
colleagues, in his party's landslide defeat in the general 
elections of 1977.  He then turned to the practice of law in 
Colombo and the south, where his defense of suspected JVP 
sympathizers first earned him a reputation as a human rights 
activitst.  He frequently contacted the Embassy in the 
1988-89 period to complain of disappearances and 
extra-judicial killings under the then-United National Party 
(UNP) government, and with fellow southerner and Minister of 
Ports in the Kumaratunga administration Mangala Samaraweera, 
Rajapakse formed a human rights organization in 1988, called 
the Mothers' Front, to advocate on behalf of family members 
of "disappeared" JVP suspects.  After he returned to 
Parliament in 1989 (a memcon in Embassy files quotes 
Rajapakse as freely admitting to ballot stuffing during that 
race--but only to balance out just-as-vigorous ballot 
stuffing by his local UNP rival), Rajapakse served as 
Secretary to the Committee of Parliamentarians for 
 
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Fundamental and Human Rights and as Director to the Center 
for Human Rights and Legal Aid. His standing as one of the 
few such lawyers in the south who continued to operate 
throughout the height of the violent JVP insurgency--despite 
threats of reprisal from both right- and left-wing 
extremists--made him a valuable source for our human rights 
reporting. 
 
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PRO-LABOR MINISTER; 
PLACE-HOLDING PM 
-------------------- 
 
5.  (C) When Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected President in 
1994, she named Rajapakse as Minister of Labor and Vocational 
Training.  Rajapakse's fervent pro-union sympathies did not 
win him many friends in the business sector (he still doesn't 
seem to have many; the Sri Lankan stock market has dropped by 
15 percent since the November 17 election).  As Minister, 
Rajapakse pushed unsuccessfully for the establishment of 
labor unions in Sri Lanka's free trade zones, and his 
personal pet project--a workers' charter that provided almost 
no safeguards for management in the face of union 
agitation--was soundly defeated in Parliament.  Following 
this fiasco, Kumaratunga moved Rajapakse from the 
investment-sensitive labor portfolio to the less 
controversial post of Fisheries Minister in 1998.  When the 
SLFP lost control of Parliament in the 2001 general election, 
Rajapakse became Leader of the Opposition 2002-April 2004, 
returning to head Kumaratunga's Cabinet in 2004 as Prime 
Minister.  The JVP, which as a member of Kumaratunga's United 
People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) helped the SLFP clinch the 
2004 polls, bitterly opposed Rajapakse's appointment as Prime 
Minister, pushing instead for the late Foreign Minister 
Lakshman Kadirgamar.  Kumaratunga ignored the JVP's 
importuning for several reasons, including a desire to keep 
JVP influence out of the high-visibility post and a wish to 
insulate Rajapakse, whom she clearly and rightly viewed as a 
political rival, from real power by ensconcing him in the 
premiership, a position large on ceremony and small on 
substance. 
 
 
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ALLIED WITH ANURA; 
SUSPECTED BY SISTER 
--------------------- 
 
6.  (C) Until recently, Rajapakse had been considered one of 
the closest friends and allies of Anura Bandaranaike, the 
brother of former President Kumaratunga.  (Anura was 
Rajapakse's best man at his wedding.)  When Anura briefly 
made an end run at his mother's leadership of the SLFP in 
1981, Rajapakse joined him--and has reportedly been on 
Chandrika's wrong side ever since.  When Anura left the SLFP 
in late 1993 after his mother anointed his sister as the 
party's presidential candidate, many of his closest 
friends--Rajapakse included--were watched suspiciously by the 
victorious       Chandrika faction.  The association did not 
hobble Rajapakse's electoral prospects, however, thanks to 
the solid and consistent support of his home constituency. 
Of the 20-odd SLFP MPs tagged as "friends of Anura," 
Rajapakse was the only one to make it back into Parliament as 
an SLFP MP in the 1994 elections.  That he won a substantive 
portfolio like Labor from Kumaratunga--despite their earlier 
personal clashes--proves his tenacity as a political 
survivor. 
 
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS 
---------------- 
 
7.  (C) Rajapakse prides himself on having founded the Sri 
Lanka Committee for Solidarity with Palestine in the 
mid-1970s, a post which led to a meeting with the late Yasir 
Arafat at least once when Rajapakse traveled to Tunis, at 
Arafat's invitation, in the mid-1980s.  (Comment:  Insiders 
in Rajapakse's campaign for the presidency credit his 
pro-Palestinian credentials for his comparatively good 
showing among Muslim voters.  We think any support he gained 
among some Muslims is more likely the result of internal 
divisions within the community than to any personal or 
ideological loyalty to Rajapakse.)  Rajapakse spearheaded the 
fight to close the Israeli Interests section in the 1980s. 
The Israeli Ambassador to Sri Lanka (resident in New Delhi) 
has told us he had a cordial meeting with Rajapakse several 
months ago. 
 
8.  (C)  Rajapakse led several demonstrations against allied 
involvement in the Gulf War in 1991.  (We do not, however, 
have reports of similar protests against our current 
involvement in Iraq.)  He told emboffs at the time that his 
anti-war actvities stemmed more from solidarity with the 
Palestinians than from hostility to the U.S., noting that "we 
politicians must do certain things" to get elected.  (Note: 
He said much the same thing to the Ambassador last month 
about his unexpected alliance with the JVP in the 
presidential campaign.)  He has given no indication of 
anti-American sentiment, has often expressed gratitude for 
U.S. tsunami assistance and for our hard line against the 
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and traveled to the 
U.S. on an International Visitors Program in 1989.  Other 
foreign countries he has visited include the UK, China, 
Germany and the former Czechoslovakia, where he apparently 
received a diploma in Trade Unionism from Prague's Trade 
Union School in 1978. 
 
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FAMILY AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 
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9.  (C) Rajapakse and his wife Shiranthi (a former Miss Sri 
Lanka) have three sons (Namal, Yoshitha, and Rohitha).  A 
daughter died in 1983.  The eldest son, who is about 20 years 
old, graduated from St. Thomas, a prestigious private 
Christian school in a Colombo suburb, during the last year 
and is rumored to be contemplating further studies in the UK. 
 Rajapakse and his sons are Buddhists; Shiranthi was raised a 
Roman Catholic.  The new President's English comprehension is 
good to fair; at times he struggles with spoken English. 
Rajapakse is expected to ask his two younger brothers Basil 
and Godabhaya, who left the U.S. to assist in their older 
brother's presidential campaign, to stay on in some capacity 
as advisors.  (There are rumors that Godabhaya, a former Sri 
Lanka Army officer, may be tipped as Secretary to the Defense 
Ministry.)  In the run-up to the election, Rajapakse was 
accused of diverting tsunami aid.  He denied the charge and, 
given the partisan hysteria surrounding all issues in the 
campaign, it is not clear what the facts are. 
 
10.  (C)  Our discussions with Rajapakse during his term as 
Prime Minister revealed an affable, pleasant and obliging 
interlocutor who seldom had anything of real substance to 
say.  Kept out of "hard" issues like the peace process and 
tsunami reconstruction by his jealous President, Rajapakse 
 
SIPDIS 
freely admitted to us and the visitors we brought to meet him 
that he had only limited knowledge of these issues--and no 
wish to run afoul of Kumaratunga by wandering out of his 
depth.  (We recall one particularly awkward meeting in the 
early days after the December tsunami when the Prime 
Minister, despite hailing from one of the worst-hit 
districts, could say little of substance about the situation 
on the ground.)  Rajapakse relatives and some of his 
political colleagues have commented to us on his aversion to 
taking controversial (and sometimes, even non-controversial) 
stands before his nomination, sometimes lamenting that the 
southerner would say anything to get elected. 
 
11.  (C)  As noted Ref A, the lack of a "paper trail" 
documenting Rajapakse's pre-nomination convictions on a 
variety of issues (the peace process, the economy, foreign 
relations) makes predicting his performance as President 
difficult.  As PM, Rajapakse viewed himself as treading a 
fine line between two opposing forces:  a hyper-suspicious 
President who saw him as a threat to her dynastic political 
ambitions and an equally suspicious JVP alliance partner, 
which saw him as a potential threat to its own 
empire-building aspirations.  His comments to us during many 
of our meetings often reflected his frustration and 
resentment at being boxed into a high-profile but politically 
insignificant sinecure by these competing political forces. 
His triumph as the SLFP presidential candidate in a difficult 
race testifies to his consummate skill as a political juggler 
under these challenging circumstances.  Having survived this 
test, the next question, of course, is how long he can keep 
these various--and potentially volatile--balls up in the air 
once he is on the national stage. 
LUNSTEAD