Corruption: Where is Sri Lanka Now

• by Groundviews 
• - on 12/10/2015 

December 9 is global Anti-Corruption Day. To mark the occasion,Groundviews used Twitter’s new poll feature in order to gauge what our followers felt about corruption.

Since the option to add short polls is still relatively new and under-used, only a few who had the latest version of the mobile app or cast their vote through the web version of Twitter were able to participate. By the end of the day, 89% of those who took the poll said that corruption was an important issue.

On December 9, we also asked our readers over Twitter whether they thought the situation regarding corruption had improved or deteriorated after January 8th.

Interestingly, the majority of respondents on Twitter (49%) felt that there was no real difference with regards to the situation since January 8. This perhaps reflects frustrations with the current Government, that even with an ambitious 100 day plan and stance on good governance has erred, including President Sirisena appointing his brother Kumarasinghe Sirisena to head Sri Lanka Telecom. The appointment of Arjuna Mahendran as Central Bank Governor also raised eyebrows following some controversy over Government bond sales.

Clearly, with the prevalence of social media, people especially amongst a younger demographic, are less tolerant of what they perceive as corruption. Bulk text messages sent out to raise awareness about the Anti Corruption walk organized by the Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption was met by ire by many on social media:

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