Sri Lanka votes labourer’s son to presidency, chooses to reclaim democracy – just like India did

Following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 American presidential elections, these and many similar ideas about “democracy under threat” have dominated public and private conversations among democrats globally. There is a real basis for these concerns. The 2024 Democracy Report from the V-Dem Institute in Sweden tells us that on average the world has moved steadily in a more autocratic direction since 2009.

But the movement is not all one way. Over that same time period, voters in some of the world’s oldest and most established democracies have clawed back power from leaders with predatory political ambitions who had abused their elected positions. The panicked image of witless voters being driven through sophisticated online manipulation by fake news, manufactured anger and artificial polarisation is to some extent real and is certainly worrying. But other voters who have become aware of the dangers of populism and online political activism are making much better voting choices.

Trump’s defeat by pragmatic Joe Biden in 2020 was the first step. Then in 2022 competent, serious Lula de Silva just managed to reclaim the presidency from Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s own rather incompetent Trump lookalike. In 2024, the anti-populist trend has accelerated. In June, despite poll predictions, India’s voters deprived the Bharatiya...

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