Jair Bolsonaro’s Economy Minister Paulo Guedes complained at a business meeting this week in Belo Horizonte that they shouted at him “Get your hands off my salary” at an airport. He then reflected on his audience of him: “But now the thief is coming” thus alluding to the elected president Lula da Silva.
More than words, attitudes that summarize with those ways how Brazil went from political polarization to an implacable and unpredictable crack after Sunday’s elections.
The responsibilities, among other things, lie with the outgoing government. The controversial president’s refusal to acknowledge his defeat, his reckless silence for 45 hours after the vote and the coup insurrection of truckers along with marches calling for a military coup should not be seen as an exit from the frustration of the losers.
Rather, they are warnings of the future in this present for the upcoming PT rule. This is the opposition that is coming and perhaps this is also the methodology with which Lula will face, leading a country that will welcome him with enormous economic problems hidden for a long time under the electoral carpets.
The pickets of truckers whose coordination to block routes had been known for five days before the elections, the premeditated ineffectiveness of the traffic police controlled by the president’s most disruptive son, Flavio Bolsonaro, form an extortion group on the new power when it has not yet been established.
a blue tit
Here was remembered the wild strike of 2018 by truckers, which lasted eleven days with multimillion-dollar losses due to lack of food and fuel. This scenario compounded the disgust that Brazilians already carried and it catapulted the then irrelevant deputy Bolsonaro to the presidency.
In his delayed and ambiguous speech in Brasilia on the elections, in which he did not recognize his defeat and never will, the outgoing president justified the protest of the truckers and with the same argument he then encouraged military marches, alluding to a alleged social anger over the electoral process. Discomfort that he did not detailed.
It is known that he privately scolded the fact that on election day no tickets were paid on means of transport, which made it easier for people without resources to vote. He translated that right into an advantage for the opposition. In Brazil, voting is compulsory and the state it must enforce this constitutional mandate.
Bolsonaro did the opposite. On that day, the controversial traffic police that his son sponsors armed dozens of checkpoints in the north of the petista, to delay the buses that took these people to the polling stations. There are keys there that explain why such a leadership ended up losing the presidency.
The denial of the result had similarities to the behavior of the American populist thug Donald Trump towards Joe Biden, whom he did not accompany in his inauguration and likewise never accepted his defeat. Or closer, between us, with the attitude of Cristina Kirchner with Mauricio Macri in 2015 when did not attend the inauguration of his successor.
Escape from allies
In the Brazilian version, the cost of this contempt for the very existence of the adversary added the peculiarity that showed Bolsonaro leadership in dissolution. There was an undeniable escape from his allies, first among cabinet members and then among the governors and mayors who were loyal to him. Everyone, except the fanatical minorities, approached the winners and repudiated the protest of the truck drivers.
There is another dimension that must be observed. The president got more than 58 million votes on Sunday, just two million less than Lula, a difference of only 1.8% with the winner. The two shared the country equally. The loser gained spectacular political power from his bases in Congress, in the governments of the country’s major districts, and in most municipalities.
Was the birth of Bolsonarism, a force that will coexist decisively with the new government. But behind the more republican differences in behavior among that leadership is the germ of a battle that threatens to start much sooner than predicted by dominance of that huge mass of voters.
“Bolsonaro may represent the anger of his people, but he is unable to guide them,” he says Clarione a veteran local reporter. Two possible suitors for that balcony, although not the only ones, are Tarcisio de Freitas, an evangelist allied to the head of state, who has just comfortably conquered San Paolo, the largest and richest neighborhood in the country.
The other is the liberal entrepreneur Romeo Zema, who has renewed his mandate in Minas Gerais, who is also an elector of the president. For these people, that huge opposite universe it is only destined to grow and maybe they are not wrong.
Lula has some weaknesses, due to her history and situation, which she may be able to compensate with her enormous experience and negotiating skills. You know that Bolsonaro has lost to himself. He was betrayed by his authoritarian positions, cultural obscurantism, homophobia, misogyny and above all the disaster in the management of the pandemic. which has been reduced to “gripezinha”.
The slight difference in his defeat is not due to him, but not even to the new president. This result is explained by a voluminous cross-vote that has opted for the rejection of the other less for the approval of its own. If Bolsonaro were relieved of the opposition leadership, this change would imply a good news for the president-elect because it would improve the quality of dissidence. But there would also be a difficulty there.
In the same way that Lula would have lost if he had campaigned from the left or supported the specters of the Bolivarian axis, a more verbose Republican right-wing leadership would have easily won. And he could do it later, in a country that can also add frustration.
that will be the sword on the head of the new government in a system, as his political goddaughter Dilma Rousseff has been able to verify, in which impeachment is a frequent and savage tool, especially when leaders wear themselves out in front of their bases. Bolsonaro had 123 requests for impeachment.
The most complex but relevant challenge for the elected president will be to appropriate part of the mountain of support that Bolsonarism has absorbed, generating a circuit of trust. There have been many votes from humble sectors, a theoretically PT proletariat.
It will be a difficult task because Lula does not have the tools of seduction, tailwind and expansion that accompanied him in his previous administrations. This time the emergencies due to social debt and the correction of the tax issue await him, or elseNo adjustment needed in a time when the economy will fall.
It is also not clear how inflation will react, which this year fell due to the maneuvers of Guedes, who reduced taxes on fuels. But those constraints will have to be replaced, which will reach the price index. All of this is measured in political costs.
In similar scenarios of public impatience and global crisis, Chilean Gabriel Boric, who took office only in March with the banner of resolving historical inequalities in that country, suffers an extraordinary collapse of his image below 30%. Colombian Gustavo Petro, who has just arrived with the same goals, has already lost ten points of support in three months in power.
The appointment of Lula da Silva’s vice president-elect, conservative Geraldo Alckmin, to coordinate the transition is an intelligent signal in the sense of rebuilding trust. Designation is a gesture with multiple recipients. On the one hand, from the first moment the future official negotiates that the base salary is kept above inflation and perpetuate social assistance to the poorest groups.
What’s more, that presence is at the root of the economic calm of the day after the elections. The stock market started with a slight decline and closed with a 1.37% rise. The dollar recorded its lowest price in 10 days and the EWZ, the main Brazilian index of the New York market, closed with a rise of 3.75%, at its highest.
The market does not seem to fear this electoral novelty and that is why it does not accompany the protests of the Bolsonerist bases, despite also the inconvenient delay in revealing the economic team of Da Silva, which would be composed of men who were with the former center-left-president in right Fernando Henrique Cardoso the creators of reality
He has already given another notable signal, he will not ask for the removal of the president of the Central Bank appointed by Bolsonaro, nor the repeal of the law that enshrines the independence of that body. New times.
© Copyright Clarin 2022
Source: Clarin
