Brazil is heading for a nasty political confrontation that will culminate in the bitterest (and most interesting) presidential elections next year. Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are on their way to collide.
(Trump is not here, but the relationship between the US and Europe will not return.)
In recent years, Brazilians have endured the worst recession in the country’s history, one of the highest COVID-19 death figures in the world, an increase in violent crime, and a global controversy over large-scale destruction in the Amazon. That is why the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, faces an uncertain future.
(The threatening complications of a long pandemic).
Bolsonaro, whom some call the ‘Trump of the tropics’, was elected president in October 2018 with more than 55 percent of the vote in a deeply polarized nation.
Echoing Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, he vowed to “drain the swamp” by fighting crime and corruption, adopting confrontational views on social issues and expressing deep support for Brazil’s armed forces.
But since his inauguration in 2019, Bolsonaro has faced, and at times sparked, one political storm after another. Candidate Bolsonaro had promised to boost an economy mired in recession since 2014, but economic growth remains low and unemployment high.
In part that’s due to the pandemic, of course, but the covid-19 management has been disastrous, it has refused to support the use of face masks and it has spoiled the launch of the vaccine. As the pandemic took hold, Bolsonaro offered an emergency stipend that temporarily helped the country’s poorest citizens, but 55 percent of Brazil’s population faced food insecurity in 2020. Tens of millions still go to bed. hungry.
As for the controversies surrounding the Amazon, rapid deforestation accounted for a third of the destruction of the world’s tropical forests in 2019. Trump, a climate change skeptic, was willing to ignore the environmental implications of all this destruction, but the The Biden administration has joined with European leaders to combine offers of financial aid for Brazil with pressure on Bolsonaro to reverse the course of politics for the Amazon.
But Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva re-enters the scene. The former president, known as Lula, a still popular left-wing activist, is now out of prison and preparing to face Bolsonaro in next year’s presidential elections. When that happens, the world will see a new kind of fight, one that will be bitterly contentious.
In recent years, the world has gotten used to seeing populist candidates taking on establishment politicians. But these elections in Brazil will feature two highly talented populists, one from the right and the other from the left, who will go head-to-head.
Lula represents the poorest people in Brazil, those who feel that no one else in power cares about them. His formative experience as a tough but smart union leader and the popularity he gained as president by investing large amounts of public money to create opportunities for Brazil’s poorest families give him a stature and a chance to win that none of Bolsonaro’s other rivals. can match.
Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro is better connected to the Brazilian middle class, which is fed up with crime and corruption during the period when the Workers’ Party, led first by Lula and then by elected successor Dilma Rousseff, ruled the country. .
Although Lula presents himself as a victim of political persecution, his government was ultimately embroiled in the largest criminal corruption investigation in Brazil’s history as part of the so-called ‘Lava Jato’ scandal, an investigation that began with accusations of hiring. bribes at Brazil’s national oil company, but it spread in multiple directions and across borders.
According to the working group that investigated the crimes related to ‘Lava Jato’, the investigation led to the return to the Brazilian treasury of more than US $ 800 million and the conviction of 278 people. The former presidents of Peru, Panama and El Salvador went to prison. Also Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.
But Lula has never accepted responsibility for the wrongdoing, although he owes his release from prison to a legal technicality. He insists that he is a victim of political persecution. That’s an excellent indicator of the kind of scathing campaign Brazil can expect over the next 16 months.
Despite all the setbacks and failures that Brazil’s two political heavyweights have suffered, polls show that each has managed to maintain the support of staunch supporters. And there are not enough likely voters in Brazil for another candidate to emerge from the two dozen Brazilian political parties to challenge either one.
Meanwhile, covid-19 continues to devastate the country, the economy is reeling, and attacks on social media are already stoking political tensions. It is going to be a hot year for Brazil.
Ian Bremmer
Presidente de Eurasia Group y GZero Media, y autor de ‘Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism’.
@ianbremmer
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