Rajapaksa: The charismatic leader both loved and hated for role in ending bloody civil war in Lanka

Sri Lanka's new Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, a lawyer-turned-politician, is hailed by the Sinhala Buddhist majority for ruthlessly vanquishing Tamil insurgency, but is also criticised by the international community for his human rights record and for pushing the country into the "Chinese debt trap".

Rajapaksa, 74, earlier served as the country's president from 2005-2015, becoming South Asia's longest-serving leader.

However, it has not been a smooth sailing for Rajapaksa, a veteran street-fighter politician who entered parliament when he was just 24, becoming the country's youngest ever parliamentarian in 1970.

Known for remembering peoples' names, Rajapaksa was chosen as prime minister after the general election of April 2004, when the United People's Freedom Alliance, a coalition led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, won a majority in Parliament. He was chosen as the Sri Lanka Freedom Party's presidential nominee in November 2005.

Ending the nearly 30-year-long bloody civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), where all his predecessors had failed, Rajapaksa has turned a cobbled hold over power in 2005 into a thumping win in 2010, leading to political analysts labelling him "a man with a midas touch".

Rajapaksa, who describe himself as "a rebel with a cause", had acknowledged a number of times that his crowning moment in his over four-decade political career was the victory against Tamil Tigers, who were controlling one-third of the island when Rajapaksa assumed office in 2005.

However,