Sri Lanka's new government has accused toppled strongman Mahinda Rajapakse of having tried to stage a coup to cling to power after losing last week's presidential election.
Rajapakse, South Asia's longest-serving leader before being beaten in Thursday's polls, had been widely praised for conceding defeat to Maithripala Sirisena before the final results were announced.
But a top aide to Sirisena told reporters that Rajapakse had in fact tried to persuade the army and police chiefs to help him stay in office with the use of force.
"People think it was a peaceful transition. It was anything but," Mangala Samaraweera, who is expected to be named as Sirisena's foreign minister, told a press conference.
"The first thing the new cabinet will investigate is the coup and conspiracy by president Rajapakse.
"He stepped down only when the army chief and the police Inspector General (N.K. Illangakoon) refused to go along with him."
Illangakoon was "very vocal and did not want to be a party to this coup" while army chief Daya Ratnayake also refused to deploy troops for Rajapakse to hold onto power, said Samaraweera.
The attorney general's department had also warned that there would be "dangerous consequences," he said.
Samaraweera said foreign powers had also put pressure on Rajapakse, who came in for international criticism during his near-decade in office over his administration's human rights record, to cede office.
Critics have also accused the former president of increasing authoritarianism and a culture of nepotism and corruption.
US Secretary of State John Kerry and even Sirisena himself thanked Rajapakse for quitting in the early hours of Friday, after his defeat in an election he had seemed certain to win when he called it in November.
The head of the army was not immediately available for comment, but military spokesman Ruwan Wanigasooriya said he was "not aware of such a coup attempt".
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