[ Will Bolsonaro Come Up With Surprises?]
[[link removed]]

ELECTION IN BRAZIL: HAS LULA ALREADY WON  
[[link removed]]


 

Jörg Nowak
September 22, 2022
The Bullet
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Will Bolsonaro Come Up With Surprises? _

, The Bullet

 

The October 2 Brazilian presidential election
[[link removed]]
campaign is now in its final stage. It is no doubt one of the most
globally significant elections this year. Former moderate-left
president Lula Inácio da Silva of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos
Trabalhadores, PT) is leading in the opinion polls with between 40 and
45 percent support in the first round of elections. The extreme
right-wing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL) trails
Lula with 30 to 35 percent.

Regarding a possible second round, should any candidate not win a
majority, Lula leads Bolsonaro by a margin of 15 percent. While many
observers consider the election already decided, others are expecting
surprises. The question remains whether Bolsonaro will accept defeat
at the ballot box. Expectations that Bolsonaro would attempt a coup
during a rally on Brazil’s Independence Day on September 7 turned
out to be unfounded.

Election Rallies and Televised Debates

In fact, Independence Day celebrations occurred without any
disturbances. Bolsonaro rallied tens of thousands in Rio de Janeiro,
Brasília, and São Paulo, yet analysis of aerial photographs revealed
participation was somewhat lower than Bolsonaro’s rally the previous
year, when he called for the abolition of the Supreme Court and
Congress.

While in 2021 the number of Bolsonaro’s supporters on the streets
was seen as a disappointment, this year’s lower numbers appear to be
a success because there have not been any larger mobilizations by the
Left for months, in contrast to the number of large rallies by the
Left last year.

Bolsonaro successfully managed to blend the celebrations for the 200th
anniversary of Brazil’s independence with his election campaign.
Several parties went to court to try to prevent the mixing of public
celebrations and electoral campaigning, but it was improbable that
courts would have impeded Bolsonaro from such campaigning. Any
interference by the courts with campaigning at this point would
support his long-standing claim that the elections are rigged against
him.

On the other hand, the presidents of the Senate, the Parliament and
the Supreme Court did not join the celebrations, and the official
celebration in Parliament on September 8 was boycotted by Bolsonaro.
This demonstrates his isolation, which even extends to the president
of Parliament, Artur Lira, usually a faithful supporter of the
President.

Bolsonaro’s popularity has increased by five percentage points since
May 2021, but his ascendancy in the polls seems to have stalled in
mid-August. As for Lula, after television debates in the last week of
August, he lost two or three percentage points to competitor Ciro
Gomes from the center-left Democratic Labour Party (PDT), who is now
polling at nine percent.

The big question is whether Lula can win the race in the first round,
which does seem within reach if polls are correct. Lula tried to build
bridges to Ciro Gomes in the televised debates, but Gomes seems set to
refuse any alliance with Lula.

Gomes is regarded as an egomaniac but was able to present rather
concrete proposals in the debates, such as a guaranteed minimum
income, which he aims to fund with a special tax on the wealth of the
60,000 Brazilians who are worth more than one billion Reals.

Another candidate is Simone Tebet of the center-right Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party (MDB), and daughter of a wealthy farmer with
large landholdings. She is now polling at 5 percent and could score a
few extra points after the televised debates increased her public
profile.

Proposed Policies

Lula and Bolsonaro have revealed little of their economic programs to
the public. Both pledged to continue with policies similar to those
they applied during their respective governments. The Brazilian
federation of industrialists complained about the lack of details
regarding the main candidates’ economic plans. While it is safe to
assume that Bolsonaro simply does not have an economic program,
Lula’s reticence on the subject may be because he wants to be
careful not to antagonize centrist and middle-class voters. He needs
to bridge their interests to form a broad alliance.

However, recently Lula did announce two measures he wants to
implement. First, he proposes to renegotiate debts incurred for
utility bills, bank loans, and retail purchases. Seventy-five percent
of Brazilians are now in serious debt, a record number that has
increased rapidly in the past 12 months. About 20 percent of these
debts relate to unpaid utility bills.

Second, Lula announced that he will continue to pay R$600 for the
social transfer program that Bolsonaro restarted in July 2022 under
the name _Auxilio Brasil_. Lula added that families will receive an
extra R$150 for every child under six years of age. The current
version of the social transfer program is paid to all households
regardless of particular composition, i.e., a single person receives
the same R$600 as a family of five.

In 2018 Bolsonaro’s campaign was focused mainly on public security.
This time public security remains an issue but it makes room for
so-called family values and religion. And it is with evangelicals that
Bolsonaro is seen as having potential to make significant headway.

While in early 2022 Bolsonaro and Lula polled equally among
evangelicals, the picture has now changed. One reason for the rise in
support for Bolsonaro among evangelicals, a third of Brazil’s
population, is probably the internal campaigns conducted by some
churches. Lula is leading firmly among Catholics, among the poor, in
the Northeast, and among female voters.

Sexism, Patriarchy, Racism and Hunger

Bolsonaro has consistent problems in attracting more female voters,
and a televised debate in late August 2022 did not improve his
chances. When journalist Vera Magalhães asked him about
misinformation he spread about COVID-19 vaccines, Bolsonaro attacked
the journalist with sexist insults, remarking, “You are thinking
about me when you go to bed. I think you have a crush on me.” Worse
still, the same journalist was verbally attacked in mid-September by a
candidate aligned to Bolsonaro, which created a huge uproar.

Further exhibitions of toxic masculinity occurred during the
Independence Day festivities when Bolsonaro defended the scandalous
purchase of overpriced Viagra and penis protheses by the army and then
went so far as to initiate chants relating to his virility.

Bolsonaro and his ministers also campaigned against existing abortion
rights. Cases in which 10 and 11- year-old girls became pregnant as a
result of sexual abuse have come to light. Pregnancies after rape are
one of the few instances when abortion is legal in Brazil. Yet in
spite of this, judges and doctors have denied this right to young
girls who had been raped. Several such cases made headlines in the
past two years.

Lula’s campaign aims to counter these deeply patriarchal politics
with a focus on the economy and basic social rights. The number of
people with crushing debt indicates the extent of impoverishment of
large segments of the population. More than 30 million out of 210
million Brazilians suffered from an acute lack of food in 2021, up
from 19 million in 2020. Hunger had been practically eradicated in
Brazil by 2014, with just 1.7 percent of the population being affected
in that year.

Indeed, malnutrition started to return before Bolsonaro took power,
and the pandemic and the liberal economic policies of Bolsonaro led to
its rapid increase. While in earlier periods hunger was present in
specific regions of Brazil, it is now equally widespread in the poor
Northeast and in the wealthy Southeast of the country. One of the
groups most heavily affected by hunger are family farmers, pointing to
the lack of support for this segment of society by the current
administration, which focuses instead on large agribusiness.

Lula has firm support among the poor, but because the better-off parts
of the working and the middle classes saw some relief in their overall
economic situation during the last two months, Bolsonaro could
increase his support in these last few weeks among those earning
between two and five times the minimum wage.

Environmental concerns became more of a focus during September in
Lula’s campaign, a topic about which the middle classes are often
more sensitive. He made peace with former ally and then adversary
Marina da Silva. Silva came close to becoming president in 2014, and
supported the right-wing Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PDSB) in
the second round of the election against Dilma Rousseff. Silva comes
from a poor background, is one of the few high-profile politicians who
is black, and is tied to the evangelical agenda.

In a well-publicized meeting, Silva appeared with Lula and announced
that she would support his candidacy and is keen to introduce carbon
credits to Brazil, the flagship project of green capitalism, in a more
systematic fashion.

Lula is also considering Ricardo Galvão, the former director of the
Brazilian Space Agency, as a potential minister of science in his
government. Galvão was sacked by Bolsonaro after the President did
not like the numbers the agency produced regarding deforestation.

It is also interesting to note the topics that have not been touched
upon by either Bolsonaro or Lula. The central fault line of Brazilian
society apart from inequality and poverty is racism. It is seen as
such a divisive issue that hardly any mention of it was made by any of
the main candidates.

While Bolsonaro routinely utters racist slurs even against his own
supporters – he alleged twice to black supporters that cockroaches
could nest in their hair, a common racist stereotype in Brazil –
Lula only touched on the topic when he referred to the rallies of
Bolsonaro’s supporters on September 7 as being “similar to
meetings of the Ku-Klux Klan.”

Regional Elections and PT Prospects

Additionally, it is important to note that the elections on October 2
will determine the composition of Parliament and the Senate, as well
as the state governors. Fernando Haddad from the PT, who ran against
Bolsonaro in 2018, is firmly leading the race for governor of the
state of São Paulo, the most populous state, with 44 million
inhabitants.

It seems that Haddad’s ally, Marcio França, from the Brazilian
Socialist Party (PSB) will win the senate seat for the state of São
Paulo. There are few other states where the PT will win governorships
due to alliances with other parties.

In the state of Rio de Janeiro, Marcelo Freixo from the PSB is
head-to-head with Bolsonaro-ally Cláudio Castro, though Castro is
leading by a small margin. In the third most populous state, Minas
Gerais, neoliberal Romeu Zema Neto from the Partido Novo is leading by
a large margin against Alexandre Kalil, the candidate supported by the
PT. In the Northern state of Pará, the PT supports the center-right
candidate Helder Barbalho, a scion of one of the richest families
there, who is running with a large alliance that also includes people
from Bolsonaro’s camp.

The lack of PT candidates for state governors is a symptom of the
regional power structures where charismatic politicians and
established families dominate. Nonetheless, for the PT, governing the
state of São Paulo will be a major win and an important power base.
Overall, Bolsonaro’s allies are set to win in 13 states if polls are
correct, compared to the nine states where allies of Lula are
favoured. A further five states will probably elect governors from
centrist parties.

Much of the governability of Brazil will depend on the composition of
Congress, and expectations are not very high for a progressive
composition. It is probable that Lula will be able to pull some
centrist parties into his government, but this will require the old
system of alliances, based on the exchange of favours and a
reproduction of clientelist networks.

Whether this cycle can be broken, or at least diminished, will depend
on popular mobilization, which has not been particularly strong in the
past months. The trade unions are firmly on the side of the alliance
around Lula, but they are not seen as a relevant actor today. If
social movements are mentioned in public, they are, first of all, the
Landless Workers Movement (MST), and then, the indigenous movements,
the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), and the anti-racist and black
movement. The former profile of the Brazilian trade unions as
important actors has suffered greatly, and it will probably be
difficult to rebuild under current economic conditions.

More important than Bolsonaro’s speeches on September 7, was
probably the news that Mercedes-Benz in Brazil will dismiss 3500
workers, 30 percent of its workforce, as it aims to outsource the
tasks the workers performed. Mercedes-Benz will focus on the
production of commercial vehicles in Brazil. Additionally, Ford shut
down its remaining factory in Brazil last year, and in April 2022,
Toyota closed a factory in the São Paulo region.

These are signs of the dramatic changes occurring in industrial work,
with work forces distributed across ever smaller units of production.
Such developments certainly focus attention on the need to conceive of
new economic models beyond the traditional focus on manufacturing,
agribusiness, and mining in Brazil. Such economic reconstruction will
be one of the biggest challenges for a new government. •

Jörg Nowak is Visiting Professor at University of Brasilia, Brazil.
His latest publications are “Do choke points provide workers in
logistics with power? A critique of the power resources approach in
light of the 2018 truckers' strike in Brazil" (2021) in the journal
_Review of International Political Economy_.

* Brazil
[[link removed]]
* Lulu
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]