evidence: The crisis escalated irrevocably in January 2022, with fuel queues and rolling power cuts. Previously, Sri Lanka was seen as the only country in South Asia to provide uninterrupted electricity, at the cheapest rates.58 Historically, fuel prices were also low by regional standards. Once the government found it could no longer control rates and availability, it set ceiling prices for food items in 2021, to no avail59—and the dollar rate of the rupee fell from 200 to 350, monthly inflation exceeded 30 percent, and protests gained steam.60 Interestingly enough, while liberal critics of the Rajapaksas took to the streets against their government, their core constituencies—like farmers, who had been deprived of chemical fertilizers for a year, and the majority Sinhala Buddhist middle-classes, who had banked on Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ability to deliver and his experience in the defense establishment—were arguably louder and more articulate in their protests.61 [...] Having rallied around the demand for Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s exit for more than three months, certain elements within the community are moving out.73 Despite Wickremesinghe’s raid on 22 July, these groups contend that they have achieved their objective and that the next phase of their campaign—which they call the aragalaya, or uprising—will depend on how well the new administration handles the economic crisis. That, in turn, will depend on the completion of an IMF agreement and a debt-restructuring program. Political stability is an urgent imperative now, and it will boil down to how the Wickremesinghe administration will react to any future uptick in the protests, in Colombo or anywhere else.