Maithripala Sirisena

Maithripala Yapa Sirisena (පල්ලෙවත්‍ත ගමරාළලාගේ මෛත්‍රීපාල යාපා සිරිසේන; பல்லேவத்த கமராளலாகே மைத்திரிபால யாப்பா சிறிசேன; born 3 September 1951) is a Sri Lankan politician who served as the seventh President of Sri Lanka from 9 January 2015 to 18 November 2019.

Sirisena is Sri Lanka's first president from the North Central Province of the country and does not belong to the traditional Sri Lankan political elite.

He is currently a member of parliament from Polonnaruwa.

Maithripala Sirisena was born as the eldest of a family of 12 with 5 brothers and 6 sisters, on 3 September 1951 in Yagoda, a village in present-day Gampaha District.

His father Pallewatte Gamaralalage Albert Sirisena was a World War II veteran who was awarded five acres of paddy land in Polonnaruwa near Parakrama Samudra which resulted in the family moving from Yagoda to Polonnaruwa.

His mother, Yapa Appuhamilage Dona Nandawathi, was a school teacher.

He was educated at Thopawewa Maha Vidyalaya and Rajakeeya Madya Maha Vidyalaya Polonnaruwa where he first developed an interest in politics.

While still in school, as a teenager, Sirisena became interested in communism and joined the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist) becoming closely associated with party leader N. Shanmugathasan in party activities.

In 1968, he took part in a communist party anti-government rally which was broken up by baton charging police.

At the age of 17, he was chosen as the secretary of the SLFP Youth Organisation in Polonnaruwa by the SLFP Member of Parliament for Polonnaruwa, Leelaratna Wijesingha.

In 1971, aged 19, he was jailed for 15 months for alleged involvement in the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna Insurrection.

Following his release from prison, Sirisena joined All Ceylon SLFP Youth Organization led by Anura Bandaranaike and joined politics at the national level.

Sirisena studied for three years at the Sri Lanka School of Agriculture, Kundasale from where he earned a diploma in agriculture in 1973.

In 1974 Sirisena started working at the Palugasdamana Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society as a purchasing office and in 1976 he became a grama sevaka niladhari (village officer) but resigned in 1978.

After serving at a number of state institutions, Sirisena obtained the SLFP membership in 1978.

In 1980 he earned a Diploma in political science at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Russia.

He rose up the SLFP ranks, joining its politburo in 1981, where he was chosen as the President of the All Island SLFP Youth Organisation, and also later served as Treasurer.

During the 1981 Presidential poll, when Basil Rajapaksa joined the United National Party, he took over the responsibility of the Secretary of the organisation.

Subsequently, he was appointed the Polonnaruwa SLFP chief organiser by the SLFP hierarchy.

He became president of the All Island SLFP Youth Organisation in 1983.

Sirisena joined mainstream politics in 1989 as a member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka and has held several ministries since 1994.

Sirisena contested the 1989 parliamentary election as one of the SLFP's candidates in Polonnaruwa District and was elected to the Parliament.

He was re-elected at the 1994 parliamentary election, this time as a People's Alliance (PA) candidate.

Sirisena was appointed Deputy Minister of Irrigation in the new PA government led by Chandrika Kumaratunga in 1994.

In 1997 he was appointed as the General Secretary of the SLFP for the first time, from which he later resigned.

In 1997 President Kumaratunga promoted him to the Cabinet, appointing him Minister of Mahaweli Development.

While in this office he initiated many concessionary grants to improve the standard of the farming community.

In August 2000 Sirisena tried to become general secretary of the SLFP but was beaten by S. B. Dissanayake.

Sirisena was instead appointed one of the Deputy Presidents of SLFP.

He became general secretary of the SLFP in October 2001 following Dissanayake's defection to the United National Party (UNP).

Maithripala Sirisena pledged to implement a 100-day reform program where he promised to rebalance the executive branch within 100 days of being elected, by reinforcing Sri Lanka's judiciary and parliament, to fight corruption and to investigate allegations of war crimes from 2009, repeal the controversial eighteenth amendment, re-instate the seventeenth amendment and appoint UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister.

He later was reported to have publicly disavowed this program, claiming that he did not know where it originated.

He was the general-secretary of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and was Minister of Health until November 2014 when he announced his candidacy for the 2015 presidential election as the opposition coalition's "common candidate".

His victory in the election is generally viewed as a surprise, coming to office through the votes won from the alternative Sinhala-majority rural constituency and the Tamil and Muslim minority groups that have been alienated by the Rajapaksa government on post-war reconciliation and growing sectarian violence.

Sirisena was sworn in as the sixth Executive President before Supreme Court judge K. Sripavan in Independence Square, Colombo at 6:20p.m. on 9January 2015.

Immediately afterwards he appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as the new Prime Minister.

After being sworn in Sirisena stated that he would only serve one term.

Sirisena voluntarily transferred significant presidential powers to parliament on 28April.

In 2018, Sirisena appointed the former President Mahinda Rajapaksa (his former rival) as the Prime Minister, wrote a letter firing Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (with whose major support he became the president in 2015) and prorogued Parliament, all in apparent contradiction to the Constitution of Sri Lanka, instigating a constitutional crisis.

This marks Sirisena's second, and most successful attempt to bring Rajapaksa to power.