Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka have suffered massively at the hands of successive Sri Lankan governments. Yet, an overall sense of faith in parliamentary politics persevered, since Up-country Tamils have so few viable options available. The 2015 election of President Maithripala Sirisena and the subsequent United National Front victory in parliamentary elections opened up new possibilities for Up-country Tamils, as it did for all Sri Lankans. Yet this initial optimism was balanced by widespread concern that development dollars and political attention would be further focused on the North and East, pushing the up-country aside yet again. However, recent changes in upcountry politics since 2015 highlights Up-country Tamils’ faith in the electoral process and in Sri Lanka, even after decades of discrimination and broken promises. Successive Sinhala-dominated governments have regularly disappointed Up-country Tamils, who have also become increasingly disillusioned with traditional political formations in the up-country. Up-country Tamil political parties, led by the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC), have become creatures of Colombo, just like Sinhala-led parties, focusing more on patronage and power than on delivering services to citizens. Benefits flowed less to these politicians’ constituencies, and more and more to the politicians themselves, in the forms of ministerial postings and perks, and patronage for friends, relatives, and supporters, to more illegitimate benefits, such as bribery and corruption. These trends continued unabated and uninterrupted under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, only to hit a startling speed bump with the 2015 presidential and parliamentary elections. 14