COLOMBO: With heavy support from the Tamil and Muslim voters, Maithripala Sirisena, the joint opposition candidate in Thursday’s presidential election, emerged victor in the race with a 51.28 per cent vote, beating incumbent Presi­dent Mahinda Rajapaksa who secured 47.58pc.

While Mr Sirisena secured 6,217,162 votes, Mr Rajapaksa got 5,768,090 and others bagged 138,201. So, the opposition candidate got 449,072 more votes than the incumbent.

On Friday evening, Mr Sirisena was sworn in as Sri Lanka’s sixth executive president and Ranil Wickremesinghe as prime minister by Supreme Court Justice K. Sripavan.

Chief Justice Mohan Peiris, who is said to be an ally of the outgoing president, was not invited to conduct the ceremony.

The ceremony was held at the Independence Square in the upmarket Colombo 7 area under tight security.

In the morning, as results from across the island nation poured in, President Rajapaksa, who was seeking a third term, conceded defeat at a brief meeting with Mr Wickremesinghe.

Many analysts agreed that Tamils and Muslims made the difference for Mr Sirisena in a situation when the majority Sinhalese community was virtually divided down the middle, although in most places the opposition candidate had a slight edge over Mr Rajapaksa.

Quite unexpectedly, the Tamils came out to vote for Mr Sirisena in large numbers. The Muslims too voted with rare enthusiasm and in large numbers for him, alienated as they were from Mr Rajapaksa after the anti-Muslim riots in Beruwela and Aluthgama recently.

Opposition candidate wins election with support of Tamil-and Muslim-dominated areas

They resented the encouragement given by the government to Buddhist extremist groups like Bodu Bala Sena.

Reports suggested that Sri Lanka’s religious minority Christians and Catholics who are ethnically Sinhalese also made a difference to the final result, in the wake of the expected visit of Pope Francis on Jan 13.

Analysts said this could be Sri Lanka’s one big chance to usher in true reconciliation among its ethnic and religious minorities.

Reuters adds: Sri Lanka’s stock market climbed to its highest in nearly four years.

“We expect a life without fear,” said Fathima Farhana, a 27-year-old Muslim woman in Colombo. “I voted for him because he said he will create equal opportunities for all,” she said of Mr Sirisena, a soft-spoken 63-year-old from the rice-growing hinterlands of the island state.

Outgoing president Mahinda Rajapaksa waves as he

Like Mr Rajapaksa, Mr Sirisena is from the majority Sinhala Buddhist community, but he has reached out to ethnic minority Tamils and Muslims and has the support of several small parties.

His allies say Mr Sirisena will rebalance the country’s foreign policy, which tilted heavily towards China in recent years as Mr Rajapaksa fell out with the West over human rights and allegations of war crimes committed at the end of a drawn-out conflict with Tamil separatists in 2009.

Sri Lanka is just off India’s southern coast and has historically had mixed ties with its much larger neighbour.

Mr Rajapaksa had cold-shouldered New Delhi in recent years but Mr Sirisena told an Indian newspaper earlier this week that “we will revert to the old, non-aligned policy”.

“India is our first, main concern. But we are not against Chinese investment either. We will maintain good relations with China too,” he told the Hindustan Times.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Beijing believed the new government would maintain a friendly policy towards China and support investment projects already agreed.

Mr Rajapaksa had won handsomely in the last election in 2010, surfing a wave of popularity months after the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels.

But critics say he had become increasingly authoritarian, with several members of his family holding powerful positions. Although the economy had blossomed since the end of the war, voters complained of the high cost of living.

Mr Rajapaksa had called the election two years early, confident that the usually fractured opposition would fail to come up with a credible candidate. But he did not anticipate the emergence of Mr Sirisena, who shared a traditional Sri Lankan dinner with him one evening and turned on him the next day.

Published in Dawn January 10th , 2014

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