Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, who became Sri Lanka's first woman President in 1994, was not a candidate in the country's parliamentary elections, but nonetheless suffered a stinging defeat.
A daughter of two prime ministers, Kumaratunga has an impeccable political pedigree and is without peer among Sri Lanka's top politicians on the campaign trail.
Personally more popular than her People's Alliance (PA) coalition, the charismatic Kumaratunga was a workhorse campaigner for this week's parliamentary election, only to see her party suffer a huge setback, falling from 107 to 77 seats in the 225-member Parliament.
Kumaratunga now must ask her arch-rival Ranil Wickremesinghe to form a government after his United National Party and a Muslim ally won 114 seats between them.
Kumaratunga has bitter critics, including several high-profile PA defectors and the campaign turned into a her-versus-them contest, even though she will remain President and will preside over a UNP cabinet.
As executive president, Kumaratunga has wide-ranging powers to name a cabinet and suspend Parliament, and it is expected she will keep the defence portfolio but give up the finance ministry.
She opened peace talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1994 and when they collapsed she unleashed the Army to capture the northern Jaffna peninsula, the biggest stronghold of the rebels fighting for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka's north and east.
Bureau Report