COLOMBO, Nov 18: Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse was elected president on Friday, beating opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe by a wafer-thin margin.

According to Reuters, Mr Rajapakse polled 4,887,152 votes, or 50.29 per cent of the vote, and Mr Wickremesinghe 4,706,366 votes or 48.43 per cent. The difference was a mere 180,786 votes.

Analysts ascribed Mr Rajapakse’s victory to a Tamil Tigers-sponsored boycott in areas under their control. According to the analysts, Mr Wickremesinghe would have won the elections had there been no boycott because most of the Tamils have a soft corner for him thanks to the reconciliation initiative made by him when he was prime minister of the country.

According to the observers, the Tigers are using a 2002 ceasefire to bolster their fighting capability and called for the poll boycott to strengthen the hawkish Rajapakse’s chances as they think his hardline views would alienate the Tamils. This will eventually boost the case for a separate Tamil homeland.

Mr Wickremesinghe was seen as being lenient with the LTTE and supporting a federal structure while Mahinda Rajapakse had campaigned for a unitary state and opposed any sharing of power with the rebels.

Returns showed Mr Wickremesinghe getting the highest number of votes in the Western and Central Province while Mr Rajapakse swept the country’s southern provinces.

Mr Wickremesinghe had been strongly backed by the Colombo-based business community, Christians and Muslims while Mr Rajapakse was seen as the favourite of the rural south and the Sinhala Buddhist majority.

An LTTE splinter group had also urged Tamils to vote for Mr Rajapakse.