* Raphael Tsavkko Garcia
Brazil has a new president. Or an old one, depending on how you look at it. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was once again elected to a four-year term. After serving 580 days in prison on corruption charges and being suspended from participating in the 2017 election, the charges were dropped and Lula is back at the top after an extremely violent election campaign with a divided country.
The vote gap between Lula and the second, current President Jair Bolsonaro was just over 2 million, with Lula winning by a large margin in the northeast region and Bolsonaro by a large margin in the south, with ancient and deeply rooted regional prejudices in Brazil.
On the one hand, if 60 million Brazilians voted in favor of Lula’s return, 58 million demanded the continuity of Bolsonaro’s government, which has been responsible for the deaths of thousands during the pandemic – or, as the president calls it, the “little flu”. – actively promoted the destruction of the Amazon and isolated the country internationally, only maintaining close contacts with pariahs such as Hungarian President Viktor Orbán.
In his speech shortly after the results were announced, Lula spoke about reconciliation and commitment to a divided Brazil, but he will struggle to achieve it. Across the country, in at least 25 states, truck drivers and other Bolsonaro supporters are holding demonstrations and blocking roads, causing a shortage of essential goods, in an effort to contest the polls’ results and force a coup d’état.
According to David Nemer, assistant professor in the department of media studies at the University of Virginia, “There’s a lot of mobilization in Telegram to bring the country, especially truck drivers, to a standstill and occupy public buildings with demonstrations. These guys are not giving up.”
Bolsonaro’s refusal to admit defeat or even make any statements for almost two days is not good for democracy. And when he did, in less than 2 minutes, he contented himself with a pathetic speech, thanking his constituents, inciting anti-democratic demonstrations (despite arguing that they were “peaceful”) and refusing to admit defeat or congratulate his opponent.
Bolsonaro remains a petty and pathetic figure as well as cowardly as he threw his supporters to the lions, arguing for four years that he would stage a coup if defeated, and eventually conceding with the speeches of the allies. , defeat.
But Bolsonaro managed to help elect a strong far-right political base in Congress that would likely oppose any policy from Lula’s new government and would force tough negotiations with the so-called Centrão.
Supporters of the current president include “mobilization of truck drivers (with the support of local businessmen and their machines), condemnation of electoral fraud (some quite elaborate, others not so much), and Bolsonaro’s silence, triggering a strategy of popular mobilization and the arts.” , explains Odilon Caldeira Neto, professor of contemporary history at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and an expert on the Brazilian far-right.
Article 142 of the Brazilian Constitution relates to the duties and obligations of the Armed Forces, including the defense of the country, law and order, and is constantly misinterpreted by the far right as allowing the Army to overthrow democratically elected governments.
No one knows if Bolsonaro will leave the government peacefully, after all, he spent years threatening a coup and now that he’s lost, he shows fear of going to jail for a series of crimes committed during his tenure. It’s one thing to have a two-minute conversation in a supposedly peaceful tone, another thing they can do by January.
Bolsonaro has only been indicted by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) for crimes ranging from petty crimes to the crime of a “deadly epidemic” that could lead to a prison sentence of up to 30 years for the future ex-president. Also, corruption allegations, spreading fake news, leaking sensitive investigative data, etc. As a result, Bolsonaro could spend most of his future fleeing justice.
But there is a fact: Despite the thousands of deaths in the pandemic, all the corruption, all the threats and real violence, all the rudeness and hate speech, Bolsonaro won almost half of the votes.
With parts of the country immersed in the process of political radicalization, Lula has no right to error. Due to Bolsonaro’s reckless spending during his election campaign, he will inherit a country with huge debts, a famine-ridden economy, and a country that is sharply divided, as has been noted several times.
It has been divided not only along political ideologies but also along religious lines, with the growth of conservative and radical evangelical sects as well as security forces that align ideologically with Bolsonaro, and in parts of the country, the growth of security forces that have helped or at least turned out to be a turning point. blind eye. for road blocks.
Once the pressing problems are tackled, Lula will have the goodwill of most of the world’s democracies. US President Joe Biden immediately congratulated his victory and the relationship between Brazil and the USA is expected to gain new momentum – Bolsonaro had good relations with Trump, but the same cannot be said for Biden.
In the past, with the support of the then Chancellor Celso Amorim, Brazilian foreign policy tried to take an active position on the world stage: it made an agreement between Iran and Turkey on Iranian nuclear weapons, formed alliances with Africa, recognized Palestine as a state. and Brazil’s international recognition by maintaining excellent relations with Barack Obama.
Brazilian foreign policy with Bolsonaro has mostly resulted in isolation, and now some of Lula’s former policies may return to center stage as the country renews the debate over a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
It is not yet clear how Lula will manage the intricate issue of Russia’s war against Ukraine – during the campaign, the former president repeated the old prayer of the Latin American left to equate the aggressor state Russia with the victim Ukraine.
Finally, Brazil’s role in the BRICS should be taken into account, but it is also true that Lula in his opening speech preached a cautious approach to environmental problems and the protection of environmental problems to the USA and the European Union. Amazon rainforest.
* Raphael Tsavkko Garcia He is a journalist and human rights doctor from the University of Deusto. Contributed to tools such as Foreign Policy, Undark, The Washington Post, Deutsche Welle.
source: Noticias
