Rajapakse calls for snap polls in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s former strongman called Monday for snap parliamentary elections after the party he fielded as a proxy swept local elections in a major blow to the reformist government elected just three years ago.

Mahinda Rajapakse said that the government had lost its mandate to govern and that the people must be given a chance to elect a new parliament.

According to unofficial results, the Rajapakse-backed Sri Lanka People’s Front, won more than 230 local councils out of the 341 that were up for grabs on Saturday.

“People have given a clear message: This government has no mandate … and no moral right to continue,” Rajapakse said. “The government should listen to what the people are saying.”

New constitution

Rajapakse, who unexpectedly lost the 2015 presidential election, said the people want him back because the government is considering a new constitution that would share power with ethnic minority Tamils and sell state assets.

Rajapakse ruled Sri Lanka for nine years beginning in 2005 and had widely been expected to win an unprecedented third term in the 2015 poll. He’d built up immense power and was popular among the country’s majority ethnic Sinhalese after overseeing the military’s brutal defeat of ethnic Tamil rebels in 2009, ending a 25year civil war.

But he was increasingly criticised for failing to allow an investigation of alleged war crimes by the military, while also facing mounting allegations of corruption and nepotism. He lost the election to his own Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena after he launched his own lastminute campaign.

Although Rajapakse does not hold any post in the party that contested Saturday’s polls, he is considered the de facto leader and was the main speaker at the election rallies across the country.