Elections in Brazil: An election with two winners and an enigma until the ballot

The Brazilian elections were settled with two winners and this is the main novelty, although it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva clearly triumphed. He did it supported by the successes of his two governments years ago, but which remain alive in the face of a very tough Brazilian reality, with the future canceled for large majorities enthusiastic about change.

Also due to a slight but clear turn that the PT leader took towards a center with which he tried to seduce with relative success segments of the middle class. The last element in his favor was the vote against than there is, much less than expected, but decisive.

The other big winner of this event is President Jair Bolsonaro, whose defects ended up becoming virtues for a large sector of the population.

Those voters don’t care about the president’s haughty tones, his authoritarian tendencies, his contempt for modernity, the gender issue and his painful handling of the pandemic. They don’t believe in Lula and there is no other alternative.

Compared to the 48% raised by the PT leader, the president added just over 43%, almost the other half of the country. What he needed to be successful was the vote against him favoring Lula.

The far-right president had already given guidelines of political strength even with failed polls that placed him 37% against Lula’s favorite seat.

The fact even before the polls was that this rigid and arrogant president, even if he lost, had all the elements in favor to lead the opposition. An alternative which, albeit losing power, will still be strengthened in the second round, which will necessarily bring together all the voters between the two contenders.

What this electoral novelty seems to indicate without defeat is the political and social place that Brazilian society is choosing.

ideological necrophilia

It is interesting to note in this regard that the center-right senator Simone Tebet, achieved third placebeating the tenuous center-left Ciro Gomes.

The whole spectrum of these three figures, with a former president running in the middle winning by four points, a president embodying the extreme of a trend, and an elected third with a more refined profile on the same sidewalk, is a very striking indicator of what Brazilians want from power.

It doesn’t just happen in this gigantic country. It is a regional phenomenon that has just been confirmed in Chile with the referendum that brought down the draft of the new Constitution. There is a message that should be heard.

It is the end of what one intelligent analyst has called “ideological necrophilia”, referring to dead ideas embraced by a legion of political leaders in this space. The Argentine case is paradigmatic of this defect.

Lula, historically pragmatic, can only recall his closeness and understanding with the then President George W. Bush when Néstor Kirchner, Hugo Chávez and Diego Maradona repudiated him in Mar del Plata, it seems having clearly perceived these mutations. But he failed to convince. at least not enough. This will be your task for this month.

These difficulties have an explanation, among others. A major flaw of this leader, which is a very reiterated request among the people, is the lack of self-criticism for the corruption that marked the end of the long term PT governments.

Also of the devastating economic crisis of those years which, combined with the other problem, was the springboard that brought Bolsonaro to power. Lula never accepted those flaws. Maybe I will from now on.

As for Bolsonaro, his behavior in this crucial month is an enigma. But there are some clues.

Since before the start of this campaign, the confrontation with some precipices of the North American political experience of the Donald Trump era has been present in Brazil in a suggestive and rarely routine. That insistent mirror explains why the Brazilian president is a simile of the tycoon, in his way of thinking, in his ways, in the moral and knowledge deserts he shares.

That path, even repeating the game of fraud and rejection of defeat, tempted the president’s team, divided the political and conflictual sides led respectively by two of his sons.

But it is clear that he will not be able to defeat Lula if he does not abandon that path, moderate the language, show a kind of growth and tolerance. It is difficult to imagine that such a transformation could occur. Lula will bet on this impossibility.