In what was seen as a political earthquake at the time, Mahinda Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka since 2005, unexpectedly lost his bid for a third term to Maithripala Sirisena in January 2015 elections. Sirisena and a supportive parliamentary majority (elected later in 2015) adopted an ambitious agenda to reverse the nearly autocratic powers Rajapaksa had amassed and to address the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war, including the question of accountability over alleged atrocities and war crimes committed by the Rajapaksa government in the May 2009 decisive defeat of the Tamil Tiger insurgents.