Sri Lankan seers who predicted a victory for President Chandrika Kumaratunga's party were in hiding today as the man they wrote off as a loser was sworn in as the country's new Prime Minister.
A panel of astrologers had gone on state-television just before Wednesday's parliamentary elections to announce a resounding return to power by Kumaratunga's People's Alliance (PA).
But the figures predicted by the astrologers were astronomically wrong.
The opposition United National Party (UNP) beat Kumaratunga's PA by a whopping 37 seats in the 225-member assembly. President Chandrika Kumaratunga's family bastion of Gampaha was also crushed by the UNP.
The astrologer who led the panel, Priyantha Ratnayake, was unavailable for comment - a spokesman said his whereabouts were unknown after attackers smashed windows of his office as vote results were announced on Thursday.
Before allegations of vote rigging were made by politicians on Wednesday, astrologers were accused of rigging forecasts to favour the political parties they supported. With opinion polling still in its infancy in Sri Lanka, seers reap cosmic sums, especially during election time when they are in great demand and their predictions are believed to influence undecided voters.
However, and perhaps predictably, astrologers hardly agreed on the outcome of elections and this year their battles were out in the open amid allegations of bribe-taking and forecast fixing.
The debate over star-based predictions reached such a frenzy that the English-language Islandnewspaper said Sri Lanka's obsession with astrologers might make outsiders think it was all "loony politics."
However, the paper said it made sense for politicians to have star-gazers give their seal of approval because most undecided voters tended to swing in favour of the party most likely to come to power.
Astrologer Vijayasri Jayasinghe, quit his job with Ratnayake's Ira Handa(Sun and Moon) publication saying he could not play with planetary positions and make forecasts against his "science".
"The publisher (Priyantha Ratnayake) is making predictions in favour of the government," Mr Jayasinghe said, claiming his predictions favoured the main opposition United National Party.
"My credibility is at stake," Mr Jayasinghe said before pro-government thugs hounded him underground.
Mr Ratnayake dismissed the dissenting editor as a "casual contributor" who had been bribed by the now ascendant UNP, but it was later revealed Mr Ratnayake had accepted a job from the People's Alliance of President Kumaratunga to head a lucrative state corporation.
Opposition MP W.J.M. Lokubandara who is also an astrologer, said the UNP was set on a victory course as a vote of no confidence against the government had been filed in June at an auspicious time.
Unable to resist opposition moves to topple her government, Mr Kumaratunga sacked parliament and called snap polls, while new Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe took his oath of office today at a time decided by his astrologers as auspicious for him.
AFP