 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. The past week saw some major developments in Latin America. On the one hand, in the results of the Mexican presidential election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, won with a massive margin. On the other hand, in Ecuador, the former president Rafael Correa has been ordered into detention following the claims of a kidnapping bid. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkai as the editor-in-chief of NewsClick. Hello Prabir. Prabir will start with Mexico. So AMLO won with about 53% of the vote. And the last time he contested in 2006 and 2012, and in 2006 he was almost, one came very close to victory. So as opposed to say 10 years ago, what is the largest changes in Latin America and what are the kind of challenges he'll face? Well, probably he had won the election in 2006 and it probably was a case of electoral fraud which denied him the victory then. 2012, there are claims, was also a fraudulent election, but let's sort of say, okay, we are not so sure about that one. Now this time he has won in the backdrop of left having faced certain reverses in Latin America. We also of course had some, the left also had some victories in the sense that we have Maduro's government, he has been elected again. And though the right and the United States claims that the victory is not, should not be considered legitimate, the fact is that he's got endorsed. But yes, there have been reverses in different parts over there. Brazil, there have been the constitutional coup, there have been defeats in certain elections. Colombia being the more recent one. So Mexico's victory, Amru's victory in that sense is something which is against the current if you will, or what's happening in Latin America. I would say it is that sense half and half that yes, there have been some reverses, there have been some victories. I think Mexican elections were held also in the backdrop of something which has really shocked the Mexican nation. We had 43 students who were massacred, we were killed and this seems to have been done with the connivance of the drug gangs, the army and the political establishment. So there has to be seems to be a collusion and this collusion between the political establishment, the police and armed forces and drugs is something which has been a cause for concern for the Mexican people. This case was the most striking example of that. Statement in Mexico is either you take gold or you get lead. So it's a very simple choice. You either become corrupt or will kill you. Now this has been backed up by the United States in different ways. United States has always been in favor of narco states, though it publicly fights against it and has whole set of policies that are supposedly against it, but it has been involved in drug running, helping to gun running for the drug mafia. The contras were involved in gun running and drug trade in Nicaragua. There's been allegations that the United States used drugs and various other things to shore up most corrupt regimes. Therefore the alliance between drug barons and shall we say the elite of these countries who were in power. This has been the nexus in Latin America, particularly in Colombia and Mexico. The two countries which have the most shall we say the most amount of drugs and as well as violence over there. So in that context, Mexico has been heading toward this for a long time that there has to be something which changes what the people are facing, which each government comes in and essentially becomes a part of the narco state as it were. So this I think is something which Amlu has really been able to hit. It's not just left politics which is certainly a part of it, but also talking about freeing Mexico from corruption, freeing it from violence and this is something that we'll have to see what it does. He is not a left figure as much as say Hugo Chavez was. So I think he would be more left of center and maybe a little more to the left of left of center. But he's not definitely as strong a left figure. That's not his politics. And it's also true that he has been in conversation with the shall we say the capitalist class in Mexico, how to bring Mexico to a place which frees it from drug violence and frees it from corruption which is playing the government. So in that sense, he has a much broader appeal. So I will say that he's more of a left reformist figure than a revolutionary figure. But nevertheless, even that may be too much for the United States and the elite in Mexico to swallow. So how they will push back against him, what they will do, that is to be seen. It's also interesting the campaign against him was that he is in some sense a Shabista. So that was also the campaign against him, which is the campaign which succeeded in Colombia, where again the left candidate was castigated by Dukou as somebody who's going to bring back violence. He's a Shabista and so on. So this whole bringing back of the FARC and bringing back terror in some sense was what gave Dukou or Duké the hardline right candidate, a victory in Colombia. And the fact that Mexican people have been pushed to the wall with the neoliberal policies and they're surrendered to United States, with Trump coming in, surrendered to Trump looks even worse. And that way, Obrador at least provides a far better face who can look up to facing Trump. These are the United States. Mexico does not have that kind of political or economic leverage. So how much you can confront is an open question. But yes, I think internally he has a better chance and if he succeeds internally, then fighting back against Trump may be a little easier for him. But a lot of people have also compared it to Trump as a populist. He's not a populist. He basically has been, has espoused left politics. So this argument that he is a populist is basically to try and belittle him and his populist. So another interesting question in this context would be for instance, he's also been compared at the same time to say someone like Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders for that matter. So for governments which come to power on such a platform, what are actually the options ahead in terms of say, building a space alternative to neoliberal policies? Because that has been the big debate whether he'll actually be able to combat some of these policies. He has promised for instance to bring about say public education, public health, and policies like that. But what would be a space that could be created, which is a question that might be even re-raised in say countries like England and places like that? Well, it will also depend on the kind of economic headroom he has, but the economic headroom that he has today faced with Trump and the kind of policies they would like to impose on all their friends and neighbors may not give him that much of a room to maneuver. So we'll have to see how the fiscal policies work out and whether he can then raise resources by taxing the rich. And taxing the rich means immediately combining them and their political power with drug mafia and the United States. Now, can he take all three of them together? So this is really the question that has to be answered. I would think he'd go slow of that, that yes, he will do that, but his first attempt will be to really attack violence and drug mafia because if he doesn't do that, the rest of it will not really work. It's a huge victory because not only has his party been able to sweep the two largest parties till now into minority, but they've also won both the parliament as well as a number of provincial assemblies. Even mayorships in towns. Mayorships in towns. So it's a huge sweep. So there's a huge popular mandate that he has got. So how much of the popular mandate he can use, how much maneuvering he has, he can do, will really depend on how much support he can generate. And I think the quickest way for him to generate is take some of the steps, particularly against the 43 people who killed the 43 students. So Iqbalor is in the news recently because preventive custody has been ordered for Rafael Korea in what seems to be very clearly a very shady case because it's about a kidnapping of somebody who plotted a coup. And at the same time, it's based on basically email communications between the officials, a certain series of officials. But Iqbalor is also interesting because over the past one year we have seen a withdrawal from the citizen's revolution which Rafael Korea had actually proposed and initiated during his term. And the model now being used against him is very similar to that of Lula in Brazil. So this seems to have become a pattern in Latin America of using a constitutional coup, so to speak, using the judiciary against popular leaders. Same thing happening in Brazil also. Yes, there are two things I think we need to note. One is that though the current president won on a fairly left platform and therefore it is not that there was a electoral victory of the right, this is really the current president reneging on his commitments and immediately buckling down to pressure of the United States. It's also true the Iqbalor is a small country and therefore continuous pressure of a country like the United States with its military and its other levers of power, shall we say, which is the intelligence agencies, the economic pressures of different kinds, trying to foment trouble inside the country, all of that I think sapped the will of certain sections in the Ecuador to confront the United States further. So they have made two compromises. One is, of course, internally turning the clock back. The second is on the negotiations regarding Julian Assange. They have essentially isolated him, prevented his electronic access, so he doesn't really have access. We don't know what he's thinking, what he's saying. And for a person who's been denied even sunlight for the last seven years to be put into personal, personally into this kind of isolation is virtually condemning him to death virtually. So I think they want to break him completely and unfortunately Ecuador agreed to it or have negotiated for it and we understand that the processes are on to evict him from the embassy and hand him over to the British police. And once that happens, Britain is likely to exploit him to United States and then there is a very, very major chance that he will never come out again. So this is where we are vis-à-vis Julian Assange. So along with this, if you have shifted that far towards the United States, then Rafael Correa is the next target. And he's been targeted. He stays with his family in Brussels. He's been targeted to now the Interpol, a warrant has been issued, there are extradition proceedings which should be started. So the whole attempt is now to see that this rightward shift is not challenged by Rafael Correa or people like him. So I think what we are seeing is for Ecuador, a small country, essentially surrendering to the United States, our heart goes out to people like Julian Assange who today are going to be essentially the sacrificial victims of this rightward shift in Ecuador. Thank you, Premier. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching Newsclick.