Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the country has to survive and recover rather quickly, not collapse, for your prosecution scenario to be likely and effective against any significant share of the people who caused this.
It's astonishing how many people really seem to think that total collapse / destruction of a system can be an effective way for fixing things
1. While dragonwriter's point is not entirely wrong, I also wouldn't say I agree either. Czar Nicholas was "prosecuted" quite rapidly after the russian revolution.
2. The problem, ithkuil, is if the population does not see any other way to effectively fix things. (System capture, pareto distributions, disenfranchisement, etc.)
As an aside, I created a new account for this vs. my normal because I've wanted to speak more openly than I can on a work-associated profile for a while now, I will be keeping this account lest anyone thinks it's astroturfing.