After Serbia and Brazil, all eyes are now on Israel Elections in Serbia and Brazil have signaled a move away from nationalist populism that may be echoed in Israel, a senior analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies has told TVP World. Michael Carpenter, a former senior US diplomat and presidential advisor, pointed out that the elections in Serbia, Brazil and Israel are very different but "the bottom line is that populists have been defeated in both Brazil and Serbia." Right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro lost a second-round vote to Brazil's incumbent president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on Sunday. In Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, who stepped down as president last month to lead the ruling coalition's campaign, was defeated in Sunday's parliamentary election while seeking to become prime minister. His coalition lost to a student-led movement that emerged from anti-corruption protests. "In Serbia, we have a completely fresh start from this student movement that has just captured people's attention across the country for the last two years," Carpenter said. 'Kleptocrats' rebuked "It's more reminiscent of the victory of Péter Magyar in Hungary recently, and it's a rebuke to the sort of kleptocratic, authoritarian-leaning style of governance that characterized both the Vučić regime in Serbia and the Orbán regime in Hungary." The extent to which Serbia's change of leadership will affect the region will take time to become apparent, according to Carpenter. "It certainly sends a signal throughout the Western Balkans that nationalist populism is on the decline," he said. "But again, its implications in the immediate term for its neighbors—North Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania—are still up in the air." Whether Israel is in for a sea change also remains to be seen, Carpenter said. "Israel follows next in what could be another rebuke to the populist, right wing, nationalistic government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," he said. "And so this is going to be a very closely watched race as well, because of the... repercussions not just in Israel but across the entire Persian Gulf."
