Lu­la da Sil­va has won a nar­row elec­tion vic­to­ry in Brazil. Lu­la still has an ad­van­tage in gov­er­nance be­cause he is the in­cum­bent pres­i­dent. He has al­so led a gov­ern­ment three times be­fore.

Still, a nar­row vic­to­ry makes it hard. And, if you don’t have con­trol of the leg­is­la­ture, as Lu­la does not, then ne­go­ti­at­ing to gov­ern be­comes a ne­ces­si­ty.

His nar­row vic­to­ry al­so drama­tis­es the deep ide­o­log­i­cal di­vi­sions in Brazil, which, in turn, re­flects the ide­o­log­i­cal rifts across coun­tries in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. This re­gion, which is the most un­equal in the world based on ECLAC stud­ies and IDB analy­sis, is al­so hy­per-po­larised with con­ser­v­a­tive shifts in Ar­genti­na and Colom­bia, even as coun­tries like Uruguay and Cos­ta Ri­ca strive for greater mod­er­a­tion and a mix, which po­si­tions them in the mid­dle, while coun­tries like Haiti, Cu­ba and Nicaragua are dif­fi­cult to re­deem giv­en their swirl of com­plex­i­ties.

Lu­la has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained an in­de­pen­dent for­eign pol­i­cy. He is a sol­id pil­lar of BRICS and wants to nor­malise re­la­tions with the US, in a sit­u­a­tion where Pres­i­dent Trump has aligned him­self with the Bol­sonaro fam­i­ly. Un­der Lu­la, Brazil has de­vel­oped strong trade and in­vest­ment links with Chi­na, Eu­rope and In­dia.

Yet, Lu­la seems dis­posed to an au­tonomous sov­er­eign­ty course. On the ques­tion of AI, for in­stance, he has ex­pressed the view that Brazil wants to pur­sue its own AI de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy un­en­cum­bered by US and/or Chi­nese dom­i­nance in the field.

Brazil shares a bor­der with Guyana and Venezuela and a short one with Suri­name. It shares a bor­der with sev­en oth­er coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca.

On en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and es­pe­cial­ly on pro­tect­ing the rain for­est, Lu­la is a strong voice and Brazil, as a big coun­try in the hemi­sphere, wants to in­flu­ence where the hemi­sphere and the world is head­ed.

Lu­la has good re­la­tions with the Caribbean. Al­though he sup­port­ed the Maduro regime in Venezuela on grounds of sov­er­eign­ty, in the Venezuela/Guyana Es­e­qui­bo bor­der dis­pute, Brazil has con­sis­tent­ly sup­port­ed Guyana. In the last 20 years or so, bor­der re­la­tions be­tween Guyana and Brazil have strength­ened and col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the coun­tries has in­creased. Guyana, which al­ways had a small Por­tugese pop­u­la­tion, has seen a fair amount of Brazil­ian mi­gra­tion over the last two decades.

Be­fore the stolen elec­tions of 2024 in Venezuela, when Maduro threat­ened mil­i­tary ac­tion in the Es­e­qui­bo, Lu­la played a key role with then St Vin­cent prime min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­za­lves in bro­ker­ing, through a loose CARI­COM-CELAC arrange­ment, the Ar­gyle De­c­la­ra­tion which es­tab­lished a cease­fire. Brazil, eth­ni­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly, has a lot of com­mon ground with the Caribbean.

But the ground is shift­ing in the Caribbean, as it may shift in Venezuela. Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, Ja­maica, Ba­hamas and Be­lize are mem­bers of the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as part­ner­ship. And on the same day the elec­tion was be­ing held in Brazil, Maria Co­ri­na Macha­do en­tered Venezuela and an­nounced on so­cial me­dia “I am here, with you” to the peo­ple of Venezuela. How the Venezue­lan sce­nario will un­rav­el is dif­fi­cult to say.

Del­cy Ro­driguez has been but­tressed by the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion to stave off a civ­il war sit­u­a­tion in Venezuela and fa­cil­i­tate the trans­fer of Venezuela’s oil re­sources to US con­trol. Venezue­lans who fled Maduro are very dis­ap­point­ed that his ouster left Ro­driguez in charge with a mil­i­tary jun­ta.

Maduro was not recog­nised as a le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent by the US and there­fore de­posed. Should an elec­tion be called, it is dif­fi­cult to see how Maduro’s con­fi­dant, Ro­driguez, will be sup­port­ed by a pop­u­la­tion, the ma­jor­i­ty of whom were hop­ing that an Amer­i­can res­cue would mean the fall of the en­tire Maduro regime. Here too, we see the com­plex­i­ties of over­throw­ing an en­trenched dic­ta­tor and the chal­lenges of gov­ern­ing there­after.

But if an elec­tion is called in Venezuela, Macha­do, who is some­where right of cen­tre, is like­ly to win. If she wins, she will have the best of two worlds. Those who sup­port democ­ra­cy will cel­e­brate her vic­to­ry.

Right-wing forces will al­so wel­come an al­ly as the ide­o­log­i­cal bat­tle con­tin­ues and the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as will get one more mem­ber. But elec­tions are tough to call.

In Is­rael, it is dif­fi­cult to say what the elec­tion re­sults might mean. And in less than a week from now, polls sug­gest the bal­ance of pow­er in the US could shift.

T&T must be ready to man­age its sov­er­eign au­ton­o­my and nav­i­gate to se­cure its best in­ter­ests, diplo­mat­ic well-be­ing and na­tion­al and re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, above all else.