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Gotabaya (d) and Mahinda Rajapaksa, here at a ceremony in Colombo, May 19, 2018. LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI / AFP

Elected Saturday, November 16, the new President of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has named his older brother Mahinda as Prime Minister. The clan thus regains full control of the executive power, with the risks of abuse already observed from 2005.

After five years in the opposition, the powerful and feared clan Rajapaksa returns to power. Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa will appoint his brother Mahinda as prime minister. He will take office this Thursday morning, following the resignation of the outgoing head of government Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, 70, was elected on Saturday in a poll that saw Sri Lankan voters split as seldom according to ethnic and religious criteria, into a nation ravaged by jihadist attacks on April 21 . The new head of state has garnered the voice of the Sinhala ethnic majority of the island, where the Rajapaksa are very popular for ending in 2009 four decades of civil war with the Tamil separatist rebellion, at the price of a huge bloodbath.

The Tamil and Muslim minorities, who fear this family, have massively supported its main opponent, Sajith Premadasa, who came in second with almost 42% of the ballots.

Between 2005 and 2015, Mahinda and Gotabaya Rajapaksa were already leading Sri Lanka with an iron fist. The first was then President and his younger brother Secretary of State for Defense. As the highest official of the Ministry of Defense at the time, "Gota" actually commanded the Sri Lankan armies at the time of the Tamil rebellion crash in 2009 . Forty thousand Tamil civilians were killed in this latest offensive, human rights activists who accuse the Rajapaksa of war crimes.

Gotabaya is also accused - he denies - of having led under his brother's presidency "death squads" who have taken on board white vans dozens of Tamils, political opponents or journalists. Some of the bodies were later thrown on the road, others were never found.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is now the opposition leader in the Assembly, should not have any problem receiving support from the House. This would pave the way for a new dangerous nepotism. In 2015, the Rajapaksa clan controlled 56% of the Sri Lankan budget. This could be repeated or worse, because two other members of the family are also deputies.

(With AFP)