Sri Lanka's Mahinda Rajapaksa admits defeat in presidential election

Sri Lanka&#039;s Mahinda Rajapaksa admits defeat in presidential election

(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

last updated 11 January 2015

On Friday, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa conceded defeat to his challenger, Mithripala Sirisena, after results from Thursday's presidential election showed Sirisena with 51.3 percent of the vote to Rajapaksa's 46.9 percent.

Rajapaksa ruled for a decade, and was running for a third term, Reuters reports. He called the election two years early, with Sirisena, a former government minister who switched parties, becoming the opposition candidate in November. Critics said that Rajapaksa was becoming more authoritarian and appointed several relatives to high positions in the government.

Sirisena said he plans to stop corruption, get rid of the executive presidency, and hold a parliamentary election within 100 days. The news of his win was met with celebratory firecrackers in the streets of the capital city Colombo, and disappointment from government officials, with one telling Reuters: "We don't have any good news. It is all bad news." He added, "I think people need a change and this is democracy."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.