 Hello and welcome to NewsClick's International Roundup. Over the past few days, both Brazil and Sri Lanka have seen the emergence of authoritarian leaders which have dire implications for global policy and are also part of an emerging pattern across the world. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Purkayasar, Editor-in-Chief, NewsClick. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, let's start with Brazil. So as you know, Jair Bolsonaro has won the election with more than 55 percent of the vote. And if you look at the kind of vote he's got, his influence has been huge across the entire country. And we've also seen a collapse of the traditional Brazilian establishment, except for the workers' party. Most other, say, established parties have almost been demolished. So how do you see this and his policies as part of a larger trend that is happening in many other countries also? For the quick look at what has happened, of course, the Pete has held on to its northeast part of the base, lost in other places, including in the northwest, and also other centers which they have traditionally had, Rio Grande do Sul. Those areas seems to have also gone to Bolsonaro. So overall, it's been a setback, though they have gained some ground compared to the first round of poll that it seemed at one point the gap was closing. And it certainly is still a huge gap, it's almost 10 percent. So I don't think we can consider it a minor setback, it's a major setback. The second part, which you talked about, that we are seeing globally the rise of what could be called right-wing authoritarian leaders who also espouse a particular kind of, shall be say, exclusionary tendencies. That means exclude certain communities. Bolsonaro has been very outspoken, misogynist. In fact, the vote on Dilma's impeachment, he even referred to the military dictatorship approved with approval. So as we know, Dilma had been tortured by the military powers at that point of time. So given all of this, he comes across as a misogynist figure. He's also a racist figure, he's a very divisive figure. And this is the pattern of what you can see in different parts of the world. You have the rise of Duterte in Philippines, this macho, he-man figure wanting to kill people without the benefit of law or legal processes. And of course, you also have in Sri Lanka today, Raja Pakshe coming back. It's of course the second coming of Raja Pakshe. So he's already had one inning. And you also have a Modi figure in India. You have Trump in the United States, you have Erdogan in Turkey. So you have a large number of this kind of figures who seem to espouse a certain kind of politics and you've called it authoritarian right-wing. I will also say that it's a part of the failure of the globalization project, which as we have discussed in this click earlier, was big capital and globalization. It wasn't globalization in terms of internationalization of people. This is not what is happening. It was really globalization of capital. But it did mean that certain sections of the domestic communities, people in different countries, also lost out as a part of that. And there has been the emergence not of coming back of, shall we say, left positions, left-wing ideologies, left-wing movements. But it seems at the moment that the right-wing forces who are talking anti-globalization rhetoric with a nationalist flavor, but essentially turning much more to the right and much more divisive internally. But at the same time, gathering around a kind of, shall we say, masculine, powerful figure as the hero who will restore a certain kind of nationalist pride. So cloaking this in a nationalist garb. But clearly an, shall we say, a exclusionary nationalist garb. Because in this, for instance, in India, Muslims are out of this kind of nationalism are being identified with quote-unquote Pakistan. You have the Sri Lanka, you have the Sinhala nationalism, which is again trying to identify temples as outsiders. So in each of these places, you have very clear hatred being roused against minorities. Trump, of course, Islamophobia, Mexicans, and so on. So you have different places, different countries, different kind of agenda. But united at this level, strong figures, a militarizing the country in some way and talk about nationalism as a part of a sectarian ideology, not as a part of an inclusive ideology. And if you look at the comparison with 2014 in Brazil, so what we see is that if you look at Dilma's vote in the first round of 2014 elections and the vote over here. So one of the interesting things is how much the Pethi's vote percentages shrunk. And part of this also I suspect has to do with, say, the issues people had about the large narrative of corruption that was spun for a considerable amount of time. And also resulting from that collapse in the belief in institutions as well, which again is something that we see in India also. How much the right focus on destroying institutions. So that's also, I think, a part of that. It's an interesting issue that when a crisis hits, the right-wing arguments will be about corruption. So they make it into a middle-class issue which sees violation of rules done by political establishment as a main issue. They don't see that as capital. So this is the bigger issue that if you, for instance, make legal certain things like, for instance, in India, Jetli and Mr. Modi have made election funding legal by so-called election bonds. Now this quote-unquote removes corruption. So if you violate election laws, then of course it's corruption. So this kind of shallows a straw man instead of the crisis of capitalism, you focus on only on corruption. This is also the, shall we say, something that the middle-class falls readily for. And failure here is the inability of the pete to put up a resistance to it. And we have to recognize that the pete and the left in Brazil have failed to put up the resistance against what you talked about, converting everything to something which was corruption, making pete as if it was the key source of corruption, though as we know, entire right-wing forces, including Bolsonaro and his election campaign was involved in different kinds of corruption. So this whole corruption label being pinned on the pete. It's something that pete could not fight. And why it could not fight is an analysis we need to have at the later stage. But reality is it's organizational incapacity to fight this whole campaign that's been going on for the last three, four years in the name of Car Wash. So that, I think, has cost them very dear. And it is clear that the gainer has been the right and not the centrist forces, as you said. And again, moving on to, for instance, Sri Lanka, where the left is in an even worse position. And what we see is Rajapakshi has come back to power as a prime minister with much limited powers, maybe. But nonetheless, it indicates a complete realignment of forces, which might, again, end up benefiting Chauvinism, that especially towards the south, where, say, Sinhala Chauvinism often is seen in a far more concrete way. And it is also the collapse of an experiment which tried to devolve powers, make institutions more stronger, give more power to parliament in the prime minister's position in the provinces also. So again, we see a part of that trend happening again. So just a few years back, Rajapakshi appeared to be the danger to institutions and democracy in Sri Lanka. It was also very clear that he had a very divisive agenda. Again, very strongly anti-Tamil, and making the military victory as a victory over Tamils, rather than a victory over the LTE. So that was one of the problems that Rajapakshi had. He was not a figure who could unify the country after LTE's forces fell to the Sri Lankan military. So while he could, quote unquote, win the Civil War, he could not win the civil peace. That was a vision that people had, that he was dividing it further. It's also true that in that period, there were disappearances, journalists were killed, they were arrested. So there was a climate of fear, both amongst the minority community, in this case the Sri Lankan Tamils, but also amongst various institutions, as well as what we normally would call civil society. So this was the climate within which there was a, shall we say, a counter to him in his own part, the SLFP, which is the Bandar Raikay Party, which is a part of the freedom movement, has a more nationalist, originally had a more nationalist agenda before Rajapakshi turned it to a kind of sectarian nationalist agenda. Within the SLFP, Rajapakshi was also elirating a large number of people. Now, given all of that, people saw Rajapakshi as the danger. And that's what explains Srisana coming up, aligning with the old political figures inside SLFP and managing to therefore defeat Rajapakshi. And that's what also brought in the promise you talked about more devolution of power, the fact that you would go back to the prime ministerial form of government, which used to be there earlier, and not this presidential government, all of these things had come out. Problem is that this revival of Rajapakshi, whatever may be the background, there are obviously fissures again in SLFP. There is a sense that maybe the Indian government was doing certain things over there. There have been allegations of this. But I think most important also is the fact that Srisana is thinking about the second term. And without Rajapakshi, now he feels that that's not going to be possible. And therefore a kind of coexistence between Srisana and Rajapakshi seems to be what it is going in for. It's clear that Rajapakshi does not have a majority in the parliament. The parliament has been kept in abeyance for the next two weeks. And this is what in India we know that when you don't have a majority but you're given the prime ministership or the chief ministership, the expectation is you will buy the majority. So it does seem to be that this is an open invitation for wheeling, dealing. And that's what Rajapakshi seemed to be wanting to do. And this is what Srisana is allowing him to do. Of course, what we'll have to see what happens in Sri Lankan parliament. But this is dangerous because I think Rajapakshi coming back means also certain kind of politics comes back. And what we thought would happen with Srisana becoming the president is that temporary defeat of that kind of politics. It's only now three years and we have Rajapakshi back. We were expecting after five years once the elections takes place that there was a possibility that Rajapakshi would re-emerge. The fact that he's re-emerged even before the election I think is food for thought. Thank you Praveen. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.