Sri Lanka: Can Sirisena Deliver on Reforms?
What has Sri Lanka’s Maithripala Sirisena manage to achieve in his first three months in office?
By Taylor Dibbert-April 14, 2015
In early January, Sri Lanka’s Mahinda Rajapaksa was thrown out of office. Rajapaksa, a two-term president who had ruled since 2005, allegedly abused state resources throughout the election campaign and few predicted he would lose. Though Rajapaksa still won a majority of Sinhalese votes (the overwhelming ethnic majority in a country whose population exceeds 20 million), Sri Lankans from all walks of life were simply fed up with a regime that had been plagued by corruption, nepotism, and heightened authoritarianism. Maithripala Sirisena campaigned on a bold agenda that pledged to stop the rot. But is Sirisena’s governing coalition really committed to meaningful change? Might reform in Sri Lanka be on the rocks?
