By Nimmi Gowrinathan and Kate Cronin-Furman
The 2015 presidential election brought stunning change to southern Sri Lanka. MaithripalaSirisena’s administration has walked back the powers of the executive presidency and relaxedrestrictions on civil society and the media. And the August parliamentary elections, in which SriLanka’s voters demonstrated decisively that they did not wish to wind back the clock and return
former President Rajapaksa to power, consolidated these changes. But in the north, the benets ofthis political shift have been limited. While there has been some movement on land conscations andpolitical prisoners, the military remains a pervasive presence that denes daily life in a way that is
simply not the case in the south.
