Colombo: Sri Lanka’s former strongman called Monday for snap parliamentary elections after the party he fielded as a proxy swept local elections in a major blow to the reformist government elected just three years ago.

Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the government had lost its mandate to govern and that the people must be given a chance to elect a new parliament.

According to unofficial results, the Rajapaksa-backed Sri Lanka People’s Front, won more than 230 local councils out of the 341 that were up for grabs on Saturday.

“People have given a clear message: This government has no mandate ... and no moral right to continue,” Rajapaksa said. “The government should listen to what the people are saying.”

Rajapaksa, who unexpectedly lost the 2015 presidential election, said the people want him back because the government is considering a new constitution that would share power with ethnic minority Tamils and sell state assets.

Rajapaksa ruled Sri Lanka for nine years beginning in 2005 and had widely been expected to win an unprecedented third term in the 2015 poll. He’d built up immense power and was popular among the country’s majority ethnic Sinhalese after overseeing the military’s brutal defeat of ethnic Tamil rebels in 2009, ending a 25-year civil war. Some supporters even hailed him as a king and a saviour.

But he was increasingly criticised for failing to allow an investigation of alleged war crimes by the military, while also facing mounting allegations of corruption and nepotism. He lost the election to his own Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena after he launched his own last-minute campaign.

Rajapaksa’s followers accuse Sirisena’s government of betraying the country and the military by promising an independent investigation into alleged wartime atrocities by both the military and the rebels, as demanded by the United Nations. Those who oppose such an investigation say the UN is meddling in Sri Lanka’s sovereign affairs.

Rajapaksa’s followers also criticise Sirisena’s government of selling national assets to foreign countries including the leasing of a seaport to China for 99 years.

Although Rajapaksa does not hold any post in the party that contested Saturday’s polls, he is considered the de facto leader and was the main speaker at the election rallies across the country.