Understanding Impacts of Sri Lanka's Historic Polls

In September 2024, for the First Time in Sri Lanka's History, a Third-Party Candidate Was Elected as the President

- HT Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The year 2024 was widely hailed as the year of elections, with 73 countries conducting nationwide polls and more than 1.5 billion voters exercising their franchise. While the 2024 Indian general elections may have been the biggest contest on offer, there was another important election in South Asia, which has important ramifications both for India and the wider Indo-Pacific. In September 2024, for the first time in Sri Lanka's history, a third-party candidate—Anura Kumara Dissanayake (known as AKD)—was elected president.

On a recent episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, veteran Sri Lanka watcher Neil DeVotta joined host Milan Vaishnav to talk about the island nation's dramatic political realignment.

DeVotta is a professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University and the author of an essay in the January 2025 issue of the