evidence: The largely middle-class and Colombo-based protests were soon reinforced by student, trade union and farmer organisations that had been agitating against various government policies across the country since mid-2021. On 9 April, protesters, brought together under the slogan (and hashtag) "GotaGoHome" ("Gota" being the widely used nickname for Gotabaya) established the GotaGoGama ("GotaGo Village") encampment outside the presidential secretariat on Colombo’s iconic Galle Face Green, calling for the president’s resignation. Widely known by the Sinhala words for "people’s struggle", janatha aragalaya, or simply aragalaya, the protest movement initially focused on the shared demand for economic relief. But demonstrators soon took up cries for the ruling family and its cronies to be held accountable, including demands that they return assets believed to have been stolen and hidden overseas. Over four and a half months of nationwide protests, sections of the aragalaya developed a wider critique of the mismanagement, corruption and unchecked executive power that many Sri Lankans saw as the sources of the economic crisis.[2] [...] At the time, Gotabaya’s resignation represented the aragalaya movement’s greatest achievement. But it also paved the way for a program of short-term stabilisation and crisis management that would quickly eclipse the movement’s push for deeper political reforms, while enabling parts of the political establishment that the movement has vehemently opposed to entrench themselves.