A result closer than expected in the first circular of the vote Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro threaten the circular of the moment
Brazil’s left ran in Sunday’s election hoping for an absolute majority for its candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right figure who has been Brazil’s president for the past four years.
At the very least, they expected a dominant margin and a sense of momentum before an intermediate runoff. And progressives around the world expected a categorical repudiation of Bolsonaro’s presidency that would signal that the forces of extremism were receding. He didn’t paint that way.
Instead, Lula won 48% of the vote, roughly in line with the polls; however, Bolsonaro did much more than expected, with 43%, and his supporters also beat the polls in state and senatorial races. Lula is expected to get the most votes. votes from minor candidates who are now withdrawing, and are expected to be the favorite to win in the runoff on October 30; However, the road to victory seems more full of traps than Sunday. The stakes may be much higher.
And why does the result matter so much, for Brazil and for the world?We talked about six key issues after the first voting circular with our correspondent in Latin America, Tom Phillips.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula, is the charismatic leader of the PT (Workers’ Party), the dominant center-left force in Brazilian politics. His presidency from 2003 to 2010 is remembered by many in the country as an era. of economic expansion and reduction of inequality. In 2018, when he was unable to run due to a corruption conviction that has since been overturned, far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro came to power.
With the backing of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán, Bolsonaro can be said to have been a caricatured figure as incompetent and malevolent as any of them: presiding over the devastation of the Amazon, the vast accumulation of poverty, and the death of more than 685,000 Brazilians from the coronavirus.
“The temperament among his conflicting parties was one of cautious optimism,” Phillips said. “It was touching for them, the concept that Bolsonaro’s presidency may be over or almost over. It has been done.
The catharsis that Lula’s supporters expected has not materialized. “It’s incredibly discouraging for the left,” said Tom. , who is particularly taller. The pollsters were wrong. I went to Lula’s rally and other people were crying or in shock.
This feeling of sadness on the left was reinforced by the victory of Bolsonaro’s allies in 19 of the 27 that held seats in the Senate, as well as a strong performance in the lower house.
Bolsonaro’s former environment minister, who has presided over massive increases in deforestation, won his election to Congress; so did Eduardo Pazuello, the fitness minister who oversaw Brazil’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus at the height of the pandemic. “Almost 700,000 more people died here, and their handling of covid was blatantly incompetent,” Tom said. “But that doesn’t seem to have had any effect on their support. “
“It’s been pretty toxic,” Tom first covered an election here in 2006, and I’d never noticed this point of bitterness before. Bolsonaro treats elections like wars. Many other people on the left were scared: A Lula supporter told me on Saturday that it’s the first time in my life that I’m afraid to put a sticker on my car.
These fears are not in vain: A Lula supporter brutally murdered by a Bolsonaro supporter last month, one of a series of violent attacks by supporters of a candidate who demanded that leftists “be eliminated from public life. “And the June killings of Guardian contributor Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira also came at a time when Bolsonaro has launched relentless verbal attacks on rainforest defenders.
Lula sought to offer his crusade as the most powerful contrast imaginable to Bolsonaro’s, and his message of unity is just one of the tactics the race echoed in the 2020 Trump-Biden race in the United States. On Sunday, he told reporters: “We don’t need more hatred, no more fights, we need a country that lives in peace. “
The vote comes against a backdrop of terrible pain during Bolsonaro’s presidency, as this article by Tom made clear yesterday. Bolsonaro’s authoritarian tendencies and any legal responsibility to protect the handicapped have left Brazil facing a cost-of-living crisis and a shift toward law on social issues.
While Bolsonaro legalized a multibillion-dollar welfare program during the campaign, he also promised to privatize the state oil company, pass bride and groom-friendly legislation, cut corporate taxes and tighten restrictions on abortion.
One voter told Tom, “Many of the advances that took decades to make have been destroyed in the last 4 years. “
Under President Bolsonaro, the destruction of Brazil’s rainforest reached a record high in the early part of this year; Lula promised to prevent deforestation. This is of global importance given the role of the Amazon as a reservoir of carbon dioxide.
Damian Carrington, environment editor at The Guardian, wrote Friday that nearly a million hectares of the Amazon burned last year, with fires at their point in a decade. left behind,” one expert told him. So it is no exaggeration to say that the fate of the Amazon depends on the final results of our election. “
While the identity of the next president remains crucial, last night’s effects appear to be bad news for jungle defenders, no matter what. supporters will make it harder for Lula to pass the law to Amazon, even if he wins.
Lula enlisted the help of a broad coalition of voters. “A lot of the other people who voted for him are not left-wing,” Tom said. “People on the center and center-right saw this as an emergency election. An abrupt end to this era and next time a general election with general candidates. “
It goes further now. Cas Mudde, a leading expert on populism and the radical right, wrote last night on Twitter that the result was Lula’s “worst imaginable victory” and that while he still expects Lula to win, the margin is very likely to be small, or it may be reversed if something unforeseen happens in Bolsonaro’s favor in the coming weeks.
By comparing the prospect of Bolsonaro’s defeat with that of Trump in the US, he will not be able toHe said either would have lost “very closely, and basically to a cause (the pandemic). . . Moreover, based on the American experience, expect the law to become more radical than moderate. And be very competitive in 4 years.
Bolsonaro has long since sown the seeds of electoral denial: “He paved the way for the ‘big lie’ for years,” Tom said. In July, for example, he baselessly argued that Brazil’s e-voting formula is vulnerable to subversion. that the outcome now is likely to be narrower than expected even if Lula wins “greatly increases the credibility of the narrative [of] ‘stolen elections’ among Bolsonaro supporters and thus the option of post-election violence,” Mudde wrote.
Many in Brazil worry that Bolsonaro is stoking an anti-democratic temper among his supporters, although, perhaps sensing the option of a resurgence, he was particularly quieter about his baseless fraud allegations last night than he has been recently. “I don’t think we know what’s going on now,” Tom said. “If he loses, there are other people who fear a January 6-style attack on government institutions. And most of his radical followers are armed in many cases.
It’s worth noting that Lula remains the front-runner, and that while Bolsonaro did more than expected, he remains the first sitting Brazilian president to enter a momentary circular since the 1980s. it could take place after a Lula victory is possibly premature. “If other people, even the idea Bolsonaro and Bolsonarism, broke up, they were wrong,” Tom said. “The far right is surely here to stay. “
This article was amended on October 4, 2022 to designate Jair Bolsonaro as a far-right figure rather than “a figurehead,” as a previous edition put it.