Former defence chief wins Sri Lankan presidency

Gotabaya Rajapaksa the election commission after the announcement of his victory. Photo: AP

The man who spearheaded the brutal crushing of Tamil Tigers a decade ago has won Sri Lanka's presidential vote following a divisive election.



Seven months after Islamist extremist attacks killed over 260 people, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was elected on on the back of a nationalist campaign promising security and to crush religious extremism in the Buddhist-majority country.



However, Rajapaksa's triumph will alarm Sri Lanka's Tamil and Muslim minorities as well as activists, journalists and possibly some in the international community following the 2005 to 2015 presidency of his older brother Mahinda .



Rajapaksa thanked all voters in an election that heightened ethnic and religious tensions in a country still scarred by a brutal civil war that cost 100,000 lives.



"I am conscious that I am also the president of those who used the vote against me," he said. "It is my duty to serve all Sri Lankans without race or religious discrimination," he said. "I promise to discharge my duties in a fair manner."



Election results showed minority Tamil and Muslim communities voting overwhelmingly for the ruling party candidate Sajith Premadasa who came a distant second.



Mahinda Rajapaksa, with Gotabaya running the security forces, ended a 37-year civil war with Tamil separatists. His decade in power was also marked by alleged rights abuses, murky extra-judicial killings and closer ties with China. (AFP)