SINGAPORE, July 17 (The Straits Times/ANN): A police outrider and a security escort. A luxury limousine. A 20-minute ride down Singapore’s East Coast Parkway to the downtown hotel where he had been booked into for the night.
That was the last presidential ride of 73-year-old former Sri Lankan army lieutenant colonel-turned-politician Gotabaya Rajapaksa, once a hero to his people as the steadfast defence secretary who fashioned a huge battlefield victory that quelled a quarter-century of ethnic insurgency with brutal force.