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Maithreepala Sirisena joined mainstream politics in 1989 and has held several ministries since 1994. 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". He had also served as the Acting Defence Minister for several occasions.
Sirisena was born on 3 September 1951.
He was the son of World War II veteran Albert Sirisena, who was awarded five acres of paddy land in Polonnaruwa near Parakrama Samudra by D. S. Senanayake.
He was educated at Royal College, Polonnaruwa. He studied for three years at the Sri Lanka School of Agriculture, Kundasale. In 1980 he earned a Diploma in Political science at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Russia
source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maithripala_Sirisena
