The Noboa-Trump meeting should sound the alarm over a conspiracy to use the state of exception and the threat of a US military intervention to overturn an election and establish an openly fascistic dictatorship.

Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa held what his office portrayed as a “friendly and private” meeting Saturday with Donald Trump at the US President’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida.

The meeting came in advance of an April 13 runoff election being held in Ecuador under conditions of martial law and amid preparations for the deployment of US troops to the country. Noboa, a far-right heir to a banana industry fortune, is polling behind Luisa Gonzlez, a nominally “leftist” stand-in for former President Rafael Correa.

Facing an uphill contest amid an economic crisis and growing opposition to austerity policies imposed to meet IMF dictates and afford a buildup of the repressive state apparatus, Noboa’s “private” meeting with Trump should sound an alarm over a threat to use a state of exception and US military intervention to overturn an election and establish an openly fascistic dictatorship.