ON January 8 this year Sri Lanka’s powerful president Mahinda Rajapakse was defeated in a shock vote propelled by a “peoples’ revolution” focused on endemic political corruption in the country. The winner Maitripala Sirisena has presented to the electorate a “100-day” program to rid the country of corruption.

However, when the “100-day” period expired on April 23rd with most of its promises unfulfilled, and with many of its leaders showing more interest in mending fences with the West than attending to tackling corruption at the grassroots, many Sri Lankans are now openly expressing fears of their country drifting towards the kind of chaos created in Libya and Syria in recent years.