Halting the right-wing sweep

Good afternoon, wonderful people. Brazil and Serbia both delivered surprises overnight, as presidential and parliamentary elections saw record turnout numbers in each country to reject right-wing leadership.

Lula da Silva was elected to a fourth term as Brazil’s president, beating his predecessor’s son, Flávio Bolsonaro, in a tight runoff whose result Bolsonaro refuses to recognize. The vote is being framed as a “rebuke to a conservative surge sweeping Latin America” and a “return to the future,” following a string of right-wing leaders winning elections over the past several months across the region. Despite the general jubilation, markets have been less buoyant: A Tokyo-listed Bovespa ETF dropped nearly 15% in Asian trade, and Goldman Sachs sketched an extreme case of the real weakening 10% and Brazilian equities off about 15%.

In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić conceded defeat in a snap parliamentary election to the student-led movement that has spent the past year protesting against him, on the highest turnout in decades. The Student List is the electoral arm of the movement that began after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad in November 2024, killing 16 people, and it has spent the two years since turning anger about corruption into a campaign about institutions, Axios reports. It runs on deliberately decentralized leadership and is fronted by a cardiologist, Ilija Srdanović.

Closer to home: Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence director Ibrahim Kalin are scheduled to meet Iranian officials in Tehran today, Reuters, in the Mecca pact’s first high-level contact with Iran since the Kingdom was drawn further into the war. They are expected to see President Masoud Pezeshkian and Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei.

Pakistan proposed the meeting during Munir’s visit to Tehran last week, according to Al Monitor, and Saudi deputy minister for public diplomacy Rayed Krimly said the trip supports the mediation Qatar and Pakistan are leading. Qatari mediators arrived in Tehran on Sunday in an effort coordinated with Washington. Iranian officials told Munir there would be no talks with the US until Tehran’s demands are met.

On deck for the week: The US Federal Reserve meets tomorrow and Wednesday for its first Open Market Committee meeting after it raised interest rates last month — itself a first in three years. The Fed is widely expected to leave rates on hold this week, particularly as it navigates a delicate balance between persistent inflation and the politics of the upcoming midterm elections. –Salma