Challenger elected Sri Lanka’s new president

In a stunning result that was unthinkable just weeks ago, the challenger to Sri Lanka's longtime president defeated his onetime political ally on Friday, signaling the fall of a family dynasty and the rise of former Cabinet minister Maithripala Sirisena.

Sirisena, who defected from the ruling party in a surprise move in November, capitalized on the outgoing President Mahinda Rajapaksa's unpopularity among this island's ethnic and religious minorities, as well as grumbling among the Sinhalese majority about his growing power and the country's economic troubles.

Elections Commissioner Mahinda Deshapriya announced that Sirisena obtained 51.28 percent of the valid votes cast in Thursday's election while Rajapaksa got 47.58 percent. The two-term office holder Rajapaksa conceded defeat hours before the announcement and vacated his official residence. The vote was predicted to be tight.

Sirisena, 63 and a longtime politician, was expected to be sworn in later Friday.

Sirisena campaigned on what many Sri Lankans see as Rajapaksa’s attempts to turn the country’s once lively democratic politics into little more than a family business. Three of Rajapaksa’s brothers hold positions in the government, and his eldest son, Namal Rajapaksa, is an MP.

Critics also said that Rajapaksa had become increasingly authoritarian since becoming president.

Despite his waning popularity, Rajapaksa called the latest election early, confident that the perennially fractured opposition would fail to find a credible challenger.

Rajapaksa had assumed that his rival would either be Wickremesinghe, whom he defeated in 2005, or ex-President Chandrika Kumaratunga, a former party senior whom he outmaneuvered in 2005. And until just a few months ago, Rajapaksa looked invincible.

Sirisena, from a prosperous family of rice farmers in Polonnaruwa, the fertile northeastern region, has been a career politician since the 1970s but without much of a national profile. That changed when he became the opposition's candidate in November, and vowed to root out corruption and bring constitutional reforms to weaken the power of the presidency.

However, Rajapaksa was thought to be still popular among the Sinhala majority, some of whom see him as a savior for destroying Tamil Tiger rebels and ending a decades-long civil war in 2009.

But polling was notably strong Thursday in Tamil-dominated areas, where voting had been poor in previous elections.

The results highlighted the ethnic polarization in the country, with Tamils and Muslims, the second-largest ethnic minority, both voting against Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa was accused of backing ultranationalist Buddhist groups and turning a blind eye on anti-Muslim violence last June.

Many Tamils have felt abandoned since the war's end, when Rajapaksa largely ignored Tamil demands to heal the wounds of the fighting and years of ethnic divisions. They were thought to have voted heavily for Sirisena.

Both Sirisena and Rajapaksa are ethnic Sinhalese, who make up about three-quarters of the country. Neither has done much to reach out to Tamils, who account for about 9 percent of the population, but Rajapaksa is deeply unpopular in the Tamil community.

Election officials said the turnout from an electorate of about 15 million was provisionally 65-80 percent.

Al Jazeera with wire services