Sri Lanka's former wartime defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa has won the presidency with a clear majority, his spokesman told AFP on Sunday, a day after the polls.
"We got between 53 to 54 percent (of the vote)," Keheliya Rambukwella said as official results showed the 70-year-old heading to victory in Saturday's fiercely contested election.
Gotabaya passed the three million votes mark in an election which had 16 million voters. Gotbaya's political rival Sajith Premadasa conceded the polls to Rajapaksha.
Early vote count on Sunday showed that former wartime defence chief Gotabaya Rajapaksa was engaged in a close battle with his main political rival Sajith Premadasa in the Presidential elections.
Srilankans headed to the polling booth on Saturday to elect a new president following the infamous Easter Sunday suicide bombings this year which caused a slump in the economy by scaring off investors and badly affecting the tourism industry.
The early trends showed Rajapaksa winning the election in the southern part of the island dominated by the Sinhalese Buddhists, while, his main rival Sajith Premadasa was seen gaining in the north where minority Tamils are predominant.
The former defence chief, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was engaged in a war against Tamil separatists in 2009 under the leadership of his brother and then president Mahinda Rajapaksa which eventually culminated in the latter's defeat. He also faced allegations of human rights violations for the same. However, brothers deny the allegations.
The final results will not be clear until late in the day.
Polling for the Presidential election in Lanka commenced at 7 am on Satruday and continued for 10 hours under tight security provided by 85,000 police. The ex-President Maithripala Sirisena's term in office concludes on January 9, 2020.
