Sri Lankan President Concedes Defeat After Startling Upset

ASIA PACIFIC
Sri Lankan President Concedes Defeat After Startling Upset
By ELLEN BARRY and DHARISHA BASTIANSJAN. 8, 2015

NEW DELHI — After a startling upset in Sri Lanka’s presidential election, President Mahinda Rajapaksa conceded defeat on Friday morning, bringing an abrupt end to a larger-than-life, increasingly controlling presidency that he had hoped to extend into a third six-year term.

Mr. Rajapaksa left his residence, Temple Trees, shortly after 6 a.m. “to allow the new president to assume his duties,” a presidential spokesman announced. Before daybreak, the president met with Ranil Wickramasinghe, the leader of the opposition United National Party, to offer his cooperation. His opponent, former Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena, was scheduled to take the oath of office on Friday evening.

Mr. Rajapaksa’s defeat is remarkable because he had an overwhelming advantage going into the election, which he decided to hold two years ahead of schedule. During nearly a decade in office, he had built close ties with China, begun a campaign of “megadevelopment” and sharply centralized power in one of Asia’s oldest democracies.


His image is ubiquitous in Sri Lanka’s public spaces. His campaign rallies were lavish, well-funded affairs, where he addressed a sea of voters bused in from surrounding villages. Mr. Sirisena, unable to book stadiums, spoke to people gathered in vacant lots.

On Friday, Sri Lanka’s Election Commission announced that Mr. Sirisena had won about 51.3 percent of the vote, with 47.6 percent going to Mr. Rajapaksa. The margin was just under 450,000 votes.

Mr. Rajapaksa’s son Namal wrote on Twitter that his family had accepted the election results.

“Thank you to everyone who supported us through these years,” he said. “We respect the voice of the people and Sri Lanka’s great democracy.”

Over the past several years, Mr. Rajapaksa had steadily tightened his grip on power, amending the Constitution to eliminate term limits and dismissing a Supreme Court justice who resisted his changes. But he did so under favorable circumstances, riding a wave of popularity among majority Sinhalese after crushing a long-running Tamil insurgency in the north in 2009. Since that victory, Sri Lanka has benefited from a thriving tourist industry and had the highest economic growth rate in the region, leading many to conclude that voters would tolerate his consolidation of power.

Thursday’s vote called that calculus into question, said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo. “Basically, the electorate has turned its back on misgovernance and the dynastic project, as well as authoritarianism,” he said.

After counting began on Thursday night, he said, the president must have quickly understood that he had lost the election, and been encouraged to concede by army and police officials.

“I think he saw the writing on the wall,” Mr. Saravanamuttu said. “He would have realized there was a swing. His representatives within the arms of the state would have told him, ‘Look, we are not going to buck the popular will.’”

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The upset introduces significant uncertainty. Mr. Sirisena has promised to abolish the strong presidency introduced by Mr. Rajapaksa and return the country to a parliamentary system, but the coalition around him is a sprawling, diverse one, including Buddhist nationalists, Marxists and center-right politicians, among others. Dayan Jayatilleka, a former diplomat who had supported Mr. Rajapaksa’s re-election bid in recent weeks, said late Thursday that he expected some turbulence to emerge in the coming months.

“The opposition will certainly have a transition plan, and chances of instability are small, because the state machinery will switch to the winner,” he said. “Instability will set in later, if at all, when the executive presidency is abolished and multipolarity has set in.”

A central question is whether Sri Lanka will begin to distance itself from China, which had become a major ally under Mr. Rajapaksa, extending billions of dollars in loans for the construction of new ports and highways. That trend was worrying to India, which formally complained in recent months after Chinese military submarines made unannounced visits to the Colombo port.

In his manifesto, Mr. Sirisena promises to establish “equal relations” with India, China, Pakistan and Japan, and criticizes his predecessor for incurring heavy foreign debts.

“The land that the White Man took over by means of military strength is now being obtained by foreigners by paying ransom to a handful of persons,” the manifesto says. “If this trend continues for another six years, our country would become a colony, and we would become slaves.”

Harsha de Silva, economic affairs spokesman for the opposition United National Party, said the new government would review all major infrastructure projects, withdrawing support from those that appeared to be “white elephants.” If officials discover irregularities, including any involving Mr. Rajapaksa’s family members, he said, “we will hand it over to the authorities to investigate and then put it before an independent judiciary.”

This position, he said, does not indicate “any misgivings or bad blood with China.”

“We consider China a good friend; it just happens that many of these projects in question happened to be Chinese,” he said. “We will have a balanced approach between India and China, unlike the current regime, which was antagonizing India almost by its closeness to China.”

Indian analysts warned against expecting radical policy changes from Mr. Sirisena, who shares a political background with Mr. Rajapaksa and relies on the same core support group, ethnic Sinhalese Buddhists. That group has, historically, been hostile to demands from northern Tamils for demilitarization of the north and restoration of power to elected Tamil leaders.

The contest became surprisingly close in November, when Mr. Sirisena, a longtime loyalist from Mr. Rajapaksa’s own party, suddenly defected and declared himself a challenger. He was followed by other defectors who focused their campaigns on Mr. Rajapaksa’s vulnerabilities, especially allegations that his relatives, who occupy dozens of government posts, have enriched themselves at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Ellen Barry reported from New Delhi, and Dharisha Bastians from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

A version of this article appears in print on January 9, 2015, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: Sri Lankan President Appears to Lose Election. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe