Andy Burnham’s leadership will be judged on whether he charts a genuinely different course, argues BECK ROBERTSON
ANYONE observing events in Ecuador in recent days could be forgiven for thinking they had been transported back to the Latin America of the 1990s.
Then, huge protests against IMF-imposed austerity were regularly met with violent state repression. Such events returned to Ecuador’s streets with a bang last week.
The mass demonstrations under way in Ecuador follow new attacks on living standards designed to meet the terms of a multibillion-dollar IMF loan. The immediate spark to the huge street protests was the removal of subsidies on fuel that affects not only transport costs but drives up food prices.
Latin America is being swept by a series of right-wing electoral victories. But behind that shift to the right lies less of an ideological conversion than anger, fear, insecurity, and a deep crisis of democracy, asserts MARC VANDEPITTE
ENRIQUE SANTIAGO ROMERO says the Colombian far-right’s election victory is deeply suspect — and the United States has its fingerprints all over it
LEE BROWN highlights the latest attempts to undo progressive reforms instated during the presidency of Rafael Correa
The US is desperate to stop Honduras’s process of social and democratic change, writes TIM YOUNG



