Mahinda Rajapaksa, listed in TIME Magazine’s TIME 100 most influential people in the world, has reached the Top Ten. The Sri Lankan President is currently ranked 6th in the list with a total of 85,934 votes. He is the highest ranked political leader in the list thus making him the most influential political leader.

Rajapaksa is the only politician in the Top Ten while only certain artists and the “Mother Teresa of Asia” the Taiwanese Buddhist nun, Cheng Yen is ahead of him.

The President, appearing for the very first time in the online poll carried out by Time Magazine, is the also the first Sri Lankan leader to be featured in the TIME 100 Top Ten.

Amongst other prominent world leaders in the list is US President Barack Obama at the 46th position while US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and India’s Congress President Sonia Gandhi are in at 42 and 95 respectively.

The magazine’s profile on President Rajapaksa states that “Since ending Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, and grabbing control over once independent institutions like commissions on human rights and elections, Mahinda Rajapaksa has come to dominate the institutions of his nation more than any other democratically elected head of state. “

“He challenged the U.S., the European Union and the U.N. to prosecute him for war crimes, confident that Russia, China and India would not support it — the latter two have billions of investment at stake in Sri Lanka.” it said.