Sri Lanka’s strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa staged a political comeback on Friday as his party registered a landslide victory in the twice-postponed general elections, according to the final results released by the elections commission.

The official results declared showed that the Sri Lanka People’s Party (SLPP) alone had won 145 seats and with its allies have 150 seats, a two thirds majority in the 225-member parliament.

Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya, who won a presidential election in November, need a two-thirds ‘super majority’ to carry out promised constitutional changes.

Official results showed the party received 6.8 million of the popular vote at an election twice postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Just over 70 percent of the 16.2 million electorate turned out to vote on Wednesday.

Even as results were coming in, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the prime minister’s younger brother, said on Twitter that “results so far indicate an excellent victory for the SLPP.”

SLPP stalwart Udaya Gammanpila said the victory was far greater than anticipated.

“We expected a win, a spectacular win, but not this big a victory,” Gammanpila told reporters.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also congratulate his Sri Lankan counterpart Mahinda Rajapaksa over the phone before the party even had a formal majority.

In a tweet, the Prime Minister said he looked forward to working “closely” with PM Modi and added that the two countries are “friends and relations”.

The Rajapaksa family have dominated Sri Lankan politics for the past two decades. Mahinda was president from 2005 to 2015.

Since Gotabaya won the presidential election, Sri Lankans have largely embraced the family’s populist platform again.

A breakaway party from Wickremesinghe’s headed by the son of assassinated president Ranasinghe Premadasa, Sajith, got 20 percent of the vote and was a distant second with 53 seats.

The UNP managed to win only one seat and that too came thanks to the cumulative votes polled nationally. The country’s grandest political party failed to win a single seat from any of the 22 districts.

Wickremesinghe’s former deputy and the presidential candidate Sajith Premadasa, who had broken away from the UNP to form his own party SJB, has done well by winning 55 seats with its main Muslim party ally bagging it the solitary district win in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on March 2 dissolved parliament, six months ahead of the schedule, and called for snap polls on April 25. However, the election commission in mid-April postponed the elections by nearly two months to June 20 due to the coronavirus outbreak in the island nation.

In June, the commission informed the apex court that the polls cannot be held on June 20 because of the coronavirus pandemic and the new date was decided following a unanimous decision reached between the members of the commission.

The government imposed curfew restrictions in March after the novel coronavirus cases escalated.

The first Sri Lankan national infected with the disease was reported on March 11.

(With inputs from agency)