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Tiffany Hanssen: It's the Brian Lehrer Show. Welcome back, everybody. I'm Tiffany Hanssen filling in for Brian, who is off today. We're now going to turn to a few major elections around the world. Historic ruling parties in India and South Africa are holding on to power, but just barely. In Mexico, a historic first. The country elected its first woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum. In the UK, the election cycle began yesterday with a televised debate. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is fighting for a narrow but substantial polling gap. Last night, it appeared he adopted an aggressive approach against his Labor Party opponent. Joining us now to discuss all of this and more is Eve Fairbanks, senior editor at Foreign Affairs and the author of The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning. Welcome to WNYC, Eve. Thanks.

Eve Fairbanks: Hi, Tiffany. Nice to talk to you.

Tiffany Hanssen: Listeners, of course, we want to invite you in this conversation. Do you have ties to Mexico, India, South Africa, the UK, or have you been following the European parliamentary elections? You can help us report this story with some reactions you're getting from folks on the ground in those countries, maybe some voters that you know, people you know there. What do you think will be some of the biggest challenges for those leaders in that country that you have a tie to? You can call us at 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us at 212-433-9692.

Eve, lets start with Mexico. On Sunday, Claudia Scheinbaum was elected overwhelmingly. She's an environmental scientist, former mayor of Mexico City, the first female president. What else do we know about her?

Eve Fairbanks: Yes. She's an energy scientist originally, had a lot of interesting work that she did on that, then got involved in politics and became kind of a protege of Obrador, who's the outgoing president. In a sense, her election is historic. First of all, she was projected to win, but not by as much. Nearly 60% of the current count that she seems to be getting, and she's the first female president, woman president of a country that really has struggled a lot with femicide, with violence against women. That scene is a big turning point.

On the other hand, it reflects-- It depends on how you see it, but a degree of continuity in voters saying they want some more of the same because she's expected to continue a lot of Obrador's policies. She's part of his faction, so we can talk a little bit about that. Symbolically, a big shift. Politically, less so.

Tiffany Hanssen: You mentioned femicide violence in the country, not just against women, but broadly violence connected to the cartels is a huge issue for her that she's going to have to tackle. Do we have any sense right now of how she's going to do that? Have we heard anything? Was it part of the reason she got elected?

Eve Fairbanks: Well, it's a good question. There's an interesting long piece in The Guardian that was published, I think, in November that took a look at her record in Mexico City. She, I think, was partly elected on the basis of the sense that she had curbed homicide, curbed a large amount of the violence when she was the mayor of Mexico City. The Guardian did a really deep dive that's worth looking at if you're interested. What those numbers really are, what the policies she pursued are, whether some homicides have been covered over by turning them into missing people, that's the number that they're now being reported as.

I think she campaigned a great deal on that record, and she presumably will be held to that by voters to really-- It's a country terribly wracked by cartel violence, by even the killing of political candidates, a large number of political candidates running this election. I think there's a lot of expectations around her for that.

Tiffany Hanssen: Including just before the election, right?

Eve Fairbanks: Yes. Dozens of local candidates, a number of candidates stepped down because who could really blame them? You don't want to subject yourself or your family to that degree of risk. Even in a country where a large number of people turned out to the polls, and it's a big step in a way for Mexico's democracy, it's a question how free is an election where people are afraid to run. She's got to tackle that.

Tiffany Hanssen: Violence definitely among the issues that was top of mind for voters in Mexico ahead of the election. Also, top of mind, I think we can assume, is corruption. Sheinbaum was quick to call out corruption. I want to take a listen here to what she had to say about it.

Claudia Sheinbaum: Our commitment is with all the Mexican women and men. We will govern for everyone, but as our humanist principle of our movement states, for the good of everyone, first, we take care of the poor. There will be austerity. Corruption and privileges will not come back, such as the presidential plane and the salaries for former presidents.

Tiffany Hanssen: Corruption there, Eve, has been a common refrain in Mexican politics. Obrador, who is the outgoing president, pledged to end corruption. Obviously, by her statement there, that hasn't happened. I'm just wondering, what is left for her to-- How can she really tackle this in a way that Obrador hasn't?

Eve Fairbanks: Yes. Corruption has been a really big issue in a number of elections. The Mexican, the South African election that just occurred, the UK election that's coming up, it's a big thing that's on voters' minds. I will say that, in my view, it tends to be a little bit of a proxy for other kinds of disappointments, disillusionments, issues with promises fulfilled. The act of getting rid of a presidential plane, of having officials drive VW Passats instead of Mercedes, all of that stuff is symbolic, but it doesn't necessarily make a dent in some of the bigger issues that these countries face.

It's something that's very appealing to voters, and we see that right now around the world in elections, is the quest and the promise to tackle corruption. I think a lot of these incoming leaders will find that even if they undertake some of these symbolic and, in many cases, really real gestures, they're still dealing with economic inequality, with structural issues, with problems with their country's infrastructure that will still be an issue for voters down the line, even if they get rid of that presidential plane. It's something that's being said a lot in this election cycle.

I suspect that a couple of years down the line, it will be interesting to see how many of those promises have been kept, and what difference they really made to the bottom line of people's living standards and experiences in these countries.

Tiffany Hanssen: Listeners, we're talking with Eve Fairbanks, senior editor at Foreign Affairs. We're talking about international elections and we want your perspective. Do you have connections to Mexico? We are talking now, but in the future here, in just a few minutes, we're going to talk about India, South Africa, the UK. We'd love to hear from you, love to get both your reaction, and if you know folks on the ground there who have had some insights into these elections, we'd love to hear from you. 212-433-WNYC. You can text us at that number, 212-433-9692.

Eve, rather, we've been talking a lot about immigration during this show today. We've been talking about President Biden's executive action. We talked more specifically about Mayor Adams here locally. I'm curious, this immigration issue has to be on the plate for this incoming Mexican president, both in terms of how she is going to approach it with the incoming US government, whether, after the election-- I've read somewhere that the most important election for her is actually the one happening in the US. I'm just wondering how her rhetoric might change on that and what we might see from her both now going forward. Of course, she doesn't really take office until October, but also after our election.

Eve Fairbanks: Yes. One of the things that she's called for is an extension of some of Obrador's policies, which he campaigned on-- There is a famous phrase of his, "Hugs. Not bullets." That had a lot of different meanings, but one being that, on the Mexican side of the border, there would be a more humane approach, that there would be resolutions with human traffickers, which, of course, constitute a huge proportion of Mexico's problem with organized crime and not only drug cartels. Through dialogue and that type of stuff, he has created a thing that Mexico didn't previously have, its own national guard to police the borders on that side.

She has talked about continuing that policy. I think, Americans, we really don't pay as much attention to Mexican politics itself as we should, given how much immigration from Mexico, and as a transit point from Central America and elsewhere, is a huge factor in our politics. We don't really think about the policies that are going on down there. Exactly what she will be expected by voters to do, I think it depends a lot on the domestic policies, on trying to boost entrepreneurship, on speaking to workers, on basically making Mexico itself a more viable place to build your family's future, and that will have an impact on immigration to the United States, but it's a very different conversation down there.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eve, we have a text here. "I was born and raised in Mexico and lived in Mexico City halftime. I'm a Mexican-Jewish woman. Sheinbaum is the extension of Obrador, and he has been consolidating power and finishing democratic norms. Her policies will not promote democracy." Listeners, we're going to move this conversation now to South Africa, and we definitely want to hear from you. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

You can call and text us at that number. Let's talk about South Africa. Johannesburg, Wednesday's election there, the ruling party, the African National Congress got about 40% of the votes. The ANC has been in power since the end of apartheid in 1994. First of all, tell us a little bit how the ANC has changed in those 30 years, Eve.

Eve Fairbanks: Yes, it's amazing when you think about it that a party has been in power for 30 years and is not a dictatorship. The ANC was Nelson Mandela's political party. It led the struggle for decades against white segregationist rule in South Africa and really led the overturning of it in 1994 with Nelson Mandela's election as the first Black president of South Africa. It came in with a lot of promises and a lot of good goodwill, and a lot of loyalty.

It took really a generation for that to wear off, but the ANC in South Africa had two things that it was supposed to accomplish at once, which turned out to be really problematic. Number one, there were ways in which South Africa was and remains the most, let's say, developed state in Africa, the biggest economy. It has highways. It has a level of infrastructure that other African countries, most of them don't have.

It has water, you can drink the water down here, and so on, so the ANC had a mandate to sustain that through a multiracial non-super nationalist leadership. It also had to overturn an economy that over 200 years had been created in order to benefit 10% to 15% of the population, white South Africans, which led to South Africa being the most unequal country in the world, far beyond Brazil, highest economic inequality.

It tried to do both things at once and failed at both, and had its own issues with corruption. Finally, you had an election this year in which people-- the ANC still won a plurality. We can talk a little bit about how coalition politics works. It's parliamentary system down here, which is really different than we have in the US in interesting ways, but it did way worse than polls suggested and was thrown out.

Tiffany Hanssen: We've been talking about the ANC. Let's talk a little bit about the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party. They received the second-highest number of votes, about 21%. We're going to have to see some coalition forming happening here. Let's talk a little bit about the Democratic Alliance and how you see a coalition coming together.

Eve Fairbanks: Yes, the Democratic Alliance, so it did win about 20% of the vote. It grew out of necessarily white under apartheid Progressive Party, but it's come to represent a lot of white voters. It is known overseas. I find Elon Musk sometimes tweets about South Africa, not in a very informative way, and often will represent-- and other analysts will represent that party as the party of white interests. In fact, its voters are two-thirds people of color.

It's gotten a broader voting base, but it represents some more-- I would say the main opposition to the ANC represents more of the 'Let's maintain and rebuild the state in a market-oriented way, fix infrastructure,' a little bit of a preservationist attitude. It really isn't perceived to have done very well itself in this election. There was a strong move for voters to choose a party that's only been in existence since December.

A really young party got 15-- Can you imagine, in the United States, a new party getting 15% of the national vote, which is even more significant in a parliamentary system? Just one thing I want to underscore before we talk about coalitions is the vote in South Africa, and this is true of the vote in India, the vote in Mexico, that didn't live up to certain analysts' predictions or polls. It's part of a pattern this year, so we're halfway through a year in which the most people will go to the polls in history, the year of democratic elections.

Countries representing 49% of the world's population are going to the polls. We're halfway through now. I think we can say that it's been a pretty resounding success for democracy writ large, which isn't something that maybe we Americans feel at the moment, that democracy's on the rise and it's having a good moment, but around the world, people are really saying to polls, to analysts, to predictions, "Oh, this has to happen." The ruling party expects the same power in a lot of different places.

Those expectations are really being overturned, and people are coming to polls saying, "We feel our votes are going to make a difference, and we want something different." You'll see that in South Africa with this rise of a new party.

Tiffany Hanssen: We're talking about elections around the globe right now, here on the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Tiffany Hanssen. We're talking with Eve Fairbanks, senior editor at Foreign Affairs. Eve, we have touched a little bit on South Africa here. We open the conversation about Mexico. I want to bring a listener into the conversation about that recent election in Mexico. We have Albert in Hell's Kitchen. Good morning, Albert.

Albert: Hi, how are you?

Tiffany Hanssen: Good, thank you.

Albert: I just wanted to weigh in. I was talking to your screener about-- I think Claudia Sheinbaum's biggest challenge is to step away from the shadow of López Obrador. López Obrador keeps getting cast in this country as a leftist. Maybe through a Latin American filter, you could see him that way, but his personality is very-- he's deeply conservative as a person. He preceded two terms ago as mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, as mayor of Mexico City.

He did a fantastic job with the infrastructure, as she did, but the one thing is, I think she was part of the team that won the Nobel Prize, I think, around climate science. López Obrador was the guy who paved over a good part of the Yucatan to bring in tourist money. Pemex is pumping oil like crazy, and he just does not have a really good record in terms of the environment, and also the violence that was mentioned in your report.

There's interesting things there in that López Obrador had just-- every other president before him had gotten on him for militarizing the police or wanting to do that. He did that two months after he got into the office, they're still militarized, and the violence. Cienfuegos, the general who touched down in Los Angeles, was immediately arrested, and we sent him back to Mexico. Nobody knows about his exoneration. El Chapo's son that they had surrounded, I think, in Sinaloa, and they had to let him go.

There's a lot of unexplained things around narcos and violence that she has a lot of explaining to do.

Tiffany Hanssen: Thank you so much, Albert, for the call. Eve, her ties to Obrador are going to be something that she has to deal with between now and October, I think, is it October, 1? I'm wondering how we will, perhaps, see her differentiating her future with the past, not only in her relationship with him but in her policy differentiation as well.

Eve Fairbanks: Yes, I think Albert's really on the ball. One thing I want to just surface is the text that you read out, which also made a really important point. Across many of these elections worldwide, we're seeing a little bit of a breakdown of the categories of left and right. They're becoming a little less useful, especially for us as Americans. What does that actually mean?

One thing that your texter noted is that Obrador, shortly before saying that he was leaving or putting someone else for election, his faction, he put in some proposed constitutional changes that would really change the judiciary. It would make it-- judges would be subject to election, a whole lot of other changes like that, which are kind of con--

Tiffany Hanssen: Yes, and some to the executive branch as well, right?

Eve Fairbanks: Exactly. Pretty, pretty sweeping. I think one thing to really look out for as we're observing this situation, is how does Sheinbaum respond to those proposed changes of Obrador? She has said that she will uphold that policy position. She will pursue that trajectory of his, but I think it's a really open question. How much is she going to be beholden to her mentor? How much will she really feel like she has to continue those changes, versus as a candidate, one can say a certain thing, and then do something as president, so we'll have to see.

Tiffany Hanssen: One of the things that our caller Albert touched on was Obrador's connection with the fossil fuel industry. We have Claudia Sheinbaum, who is a 61-year-old climate scientist. She was part of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that went on to share the Nobel Peace Prize with former US VP Al Gore. That was back in 2007. She has a history of climate activism, question mark. I'm wondering how we see her changing Obrador's stance on specifically fossil fuels, which he really has put at a bit of the center of his policies around both fueling Mexico, and fueling the main fossil fuel producer in the country.

Eve Fairbanks: Again, we've got to stretch our brains a little bit as I think not everyone who's a listener is American, obviously, but those of us who live there, and because Sheinbaum falls into an interesting category. She is a climate scientist. She considers herself an environmentalist, and has undertaken actions that are in that vein. She's also, though, an energy engineer. She has a lot of experience in the technicalities of drilling, of locating energy supplies, of the infrastructure of energy.

She does not come from your maybe classic activist point of view that we might think of a little bit reductively. She has said that she has not made too many noises about changing Obrador's philosophy around growing the role of fossil fuels, investing in that. I think, again, it's a little bit of a wait and see. You can project onto her a lot of different types of hopes depending on what you want.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eve, we talked a little bit about the coalition-building that's going to have to happen in South Africa. At this point, some coalition-building is also going to have to happen in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party won a third consecutive term, but it was much tighter than anticipated. You've spent some time reporting on India, so tell us what we saw there, and what we might expect from coalition-building by Modi.

Eve Fairbanks: Yes, it's an interesting case of, I would say, an interesting and instructive for us, for other people around the world, of a politician really building up the sense locally, and especially internationally, of invincibility. A lot of analysts, especially abroad, really predicted that Modi would keep surging, that he would win over 400 seats, get a extreme majority in this parliament as a populist, and in particular as a Hindu nationalist, as somebody who has sought to pass and implement a citizenship amendment act to the Indian Constitution, making it somewhat harder for Muslims to become permanent citizens of India than it is for members of other religious groups.

The first time in India that there was what some people call a religious test for citizenship, and his support base is perceived to be very Hindu. He is perceived to be a populist. I think a lot of us, a lot of people just think, okay, voters are swinging in a populous direction. Populism is rising.

That's not what happened in this election. He lost seats, his party, and will still remain-- He has the plurality, so he has the most of other parties, but he's going to have to form coalition, look for support from other parties in order to form a government and hold onto power. It was a really interesting election, because it was both a dose of humility for some of us reporters, analysts overseas, that this election season is really complex. Not all trends are global.

Not all voters are responding like they are in Europe, like they are in the United States. People are choosing really different things in different places. It was not a full-scale rejection of Modi, but a really disappointing result for him.

Tiffany Hanssen: What does it say about his leaning into that Hindu nationalism, and how that's being reflected in the voting population?

Eve Fairbanks: I think it's immediately after the election, so there'll be a lot of autopsies, but one thing it suggests is that probably Indian voters saw him in a complex way, which of course seems obvious when you say it, but less reductive, less that it was just a referendum on Hindu nationalism. For instance, he did much less well than was predicted in Uttar Pradesh, a big, big province, which contains the largest block of people who are in a sector of Indian society called scheduled castes, so could also be called Dalit.

In other words, in the former caste system, would've been at the lowest caste. There are a number of things that Modi has done that they have been very unhappy with. They may have voted on that basis. Even being Hindu, just seeing him in a fuller, three-dimensional broader way and saying, "The way this person is consolidating power, we don't like it. We don't really-- we're not looking forward to a situation where one figure with a cult of personality controls our country." That's, I think, part of what voters said.

Tiffany Hanssen: Eve, I think we're going to have to leave it there. Eve Fairbanks is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs and the author of The Inheritors: An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning. Eve, thanks so much for joining us today. We do appreciate it.

Eve Fairbanks: Thank you.

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