Colombo: PM Mahindra Rajapaksa, Srilankan People’s Party was set for a landslide victory in the General Elections, according to results announced so far. Srilanka’s strongman Mahindra Rajapaksa was poised to stage a political comeback on Thursday.

According to the news agency report, morethan 60% of the 11.3 million ballots counted, PM Mahindra Rajapaksa’s SLPP had 57% of the votes, official results showed that the party had secured 72 out of the 98 seats decided and was headed for a 2/3^rd majority in the 225 members parliament. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in a tweet described the result as a magnificent victory for the ruling party.  The SLPP has recorded a magnificent victory according to the official results declared sofar.

I firmly believed that by tomorrow I would be able to form the Parliament which is needed to implement my election manifesto, he said. Victory might make it easier for Gotabaya to amend a key provision in the Constitution that put limits on Presidential powers, a change brought in by Ex- President Maithripala Sirisena in 2015. The nearest rival to SLPP is the new party formed by former Presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa who has relegated his mother party, the United National Party of former premier Ranil Wickremesinghe to the fourth place.

Wickremesinghe party is struggling to reach the 5% mark needed to qualify for any seat in the entire Island. He is facing the danger of losing his Parliamentary seat for the first time since July 1977. In the Tamil minority dominated north, the main Tamil Party, Tamil National Alliance suffered unexpected reversal at the hands of SLPP’s Tamil allice, the Eelam People’s Democratic Party.