Colombo: Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa Friday conceded defeat to his opposition challenger in an election he had been widely predicted to win before a member of his own party defected to run against him, the presidential office has said.

The results have ended a decade of rule that critics say had become increasingly authoritarian and marred by nepotism and corruption, report agencies.

“We don’t have any good news. It is all bad news,” said a senior government official and close ally of Rajapaksa as the results came in from Thursday’s election on this Indian Ocean island of 21 million people. “I think people need a change and this is democracy.”

Rajapaksa’s press secretary, Vijayananda Herath, said the president met with former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe Friday morning. He conceded defeat and promised to ensure a smooth transition of power bowing to the wishes of the people, Herat told AFP news agency.

Celebratory firecrackers could be heard exploding in the capital, Colombo, after the president’s office said Rajapaksa had met a leader of the opposition to accept the victory of his challenger, Mithripala Sirisena. There was no sign of protests or a major mobilization of security forces.

Sirisena, a former government minister who deserted the president and changed sides to become the opposition’s candidate in November, has vowed to root out corruption and bring constitutional reforms to weaken the power of the presidency.

Seeking an unprecedented third term, Rajapaksa called the election two years early, confident that – despite his waning popularity – the fractured opposition would fail to find a credible candidate.

Sirisena took an early lead in Thursday’s election count, with the Department of Elections saying he had 56.5 percent of the initial votes counted, compared to 42 percent collected by the incumbent.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Colombo, said no-one had expected the margin to be so great.

“It is frankly incredible news from Sri Lanka this morning, the country waking up to a new political leader,” he said.

“It seems as if they have voted for political change in this country that has seen a leader lead this country for more than ten years.”

Rajapaksa won handsomely in the last election in 2010, surfing a wave of popularity that sprang from the defeat in the previous year of ethnic Tamil separatists who had waged a crippling war against the state for decades.

But critics say he became increasingly authoritarian since becoming president, with several members of his family holding key positions of power.

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

He did not anticipate the emergence of Sirisena, who dined with the president one night and turned on him the next day.

Sirisena is expected to be sworn in later on Friday.

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

The early results showed Rajapaksa remained popular among the country’s Sinhala Buddhists, who account for around 70 percent of the population, but Sirisena took his lead from the ethnic Tamil-dominated former war zone in the north of the country and Muslims-dominated areas.

Sirisena is set to lead a potentially fractious coalition of ethnic, religious, Marxist and center-right parties.

He has pledged to abolish the executive presidency that gave Rajapaksa unprecedented power and hold a fresh parliamentary election within 100 days.

Both Sirisena and Rajapaksa are ethnic Sinhalese, who make up about three-quarters of the country.