Left Horizons asks – What next for the Brazil?
While the triumph of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil’s recent presidential election represents a remarkable political comeback, his slim margin of victory has implications for Brazil and raises questions for the left.
Lula won what was widely seen as the country’s most important election in a generation by 50.9% to 49.1%—a margin of 2.1 million votes—after four years under the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, during which Brazil became an international pariah.
The triumph has been welcomed by working people and progressive opinion throughout Latin America and beyond, but also among a broader political constituency relieved that the threat posed by Bolsonaro to Brazil’s democracy has been seen off.
It marks the definitive restoration of Lula’s reputation, damaged by his politically motivated imprisonment following a sweeping corruption probe. The charges were eventually dropped after it was revealed prosecutors and judges had conspired in order to prevent Lula standing in the election that handed Bolsonaro victory.
However, a strongly motivated right-wing movement and a hostile legislature will create huge challenges for a PT administration, making it important for the left to understand why right-wing populism has made such headway in the country.
‘Trump of the Tropics’
At face value, it is easy to understand why Bolsonaro, a right-wing extremist sometimes dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics”, failed to win a second term given the many errors he committed during a chaotic presidency.
Its low points were marked by nearly 700,000 deaths from Covid because of a policy response widely seen as one of the worst in the world, rising poverty on the back of that and due to his mishandling of the economy, and his reversal of policies on Amazon deforestation that undermined Brazil’s reputation in the battle against climate change.
Nor has Bolsonaro been helped by his cohorts, with key allies embroiled in a series of scandals prior to the polls.
However, beneath the left’s delight, there is unease that Lula won by less than 2% of votes. To the surprise of many observers, and despite pollsters’ predictions, Bolsonaro scored higher than expected in both rounds of voting.
Moreover, the outgoing president has forged a right-wing movement fusing conservatism, nationalism and US-style culture war themes that can tap into generous funding, both of which make a comeback likely.
Bolsonaro’s supporters made significant gains in elections for congress, his Liberal party is now the largest in both houses, and his allies won the powerful governorships of Brazil’s three most populous states.
Economy
Beyond predictable surveys suggesting Brazilians’ top concerns were the economy, public health, corruption and high rates of violent crime, much was at stake for working people.
The country has long struggled with limited growth and high inflation, and these are likely to become major challenges for Lula in 2023 as a lengthy drought curbs agro-production.
A temporary, stimulus-induced rebound under Bolsonaro, who used public spending cynically to inflate his popular support, may have bequeathed an inflationary timebomb.
This means Lula faces politically difficult decisions about the need to balance basic support for Brazil’s poor—Oxfam estimates more than 33 million Brazilians are hungry and 63 million are below the World Bank poverty threshold—with policies to deal with rising prices, growing public debt, and global economic tightening.
The fallout from Bolsonaro’s disastrous Covid policies—he trivialised the disease, encouraged Brazilians to ignore social distancing, and claimed vaccines were unsafe—has also exacerbated deep inequalities.
As president between 2003–10, Lula presided over an economic boom that lifted tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty, and the PT with its trade union roots has been a champion of economic and social justice.
He has promised to increase direct cash transfers, expand social housing, eliminate the cap on public spending, and raise taxes on the rich—but Brazil’s economic reality will limit his room for manoeuvre. Lula’s victory will have led to huge expectations from the working class and peasant populations, and from the poor and the landless, who will increasingly demand policies in their interests.
Yet he will also be under enormous pressure from international ‘markets’ to deal with the crisis in according to their orthodox economic model. The Brazilian ruling class – the bosses, big landowners and their allies in the legislature – will also exert pressure on Lula to deal with the crisis by boosting profitability and increasing their share of national income at the expense of working people. If he succumbs to such pressure, he runs the risk of disappointing the base of his own support and leading to demoralisation. That in turn could facilitate the spread of far-right ideas.
Threat to democracy
While Lula’s comeback restores his reputation after the false allegations of corruption for which he was jailed, it also stymies right-wing efforts to use the law to subvert democracy—commonly known as “lawfare”—which served as the backdrop to Bolsonaro’s ascendance.
For example, the impeachment in 2016 of Lula’s successor as president, Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s imprisonment, and the ban on his 2018 presidential bid, rendered a Bolsonaro presidency inevitable.
As such, Lula’s return curbs for now the most serious threat to Brazilian democracy since the period of military dictatorships that ended in 1985. It is little surprise that Bolsonaro, a former army captain, speaks admiringly of that era, and he has routinely attacked institutions that could stand in the way of autocratic rule, such as the Supreme Court
The right-wing incumbent dipped frequently into the playbook of his hero Donald Trump, hinting that he would not accept a democratic outcome that favoured the left, and allies made unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud reinforced by fake news on social media.
Following Lula’s victory, Bolsonaro spent days hedging his bets to see how far hardcore supporters protesting against his defeat would go. When he finally spoke up, he failed to concede defeat or congratulate his rival.
Foreign policy
Lula’s victory will also have significant foreign policy implications, by overturning Bolsonaro’s isolationist stances that have distanced the country from multilateral institutions.
One thing that traditionally has united Brazilian leaders of whatever stripe has been their desire for international recognition. Under Lula, the country will seek to restore its prominent role as a voice for the Global South and rekindle regional leadership.
In particular, Lula is likely to improve the damage done by Bolsonaro to ties with radical leftist countries in the hemisphere such as Venezuela and Cuba, and forge common cause with others that have recently elected left-wing leaders, including Chile and Colombia.
Amazon
Finally, Lula’s victory has major implications for the fate of the Brazilian Amazon, and hence global efforts to tackle climate change, and he will work to restore his country’s damaged credibility as a champion of conservation.
Bolsonaro reversed the long-term trend of reduced deforestation through policies that weakened enforcement measures, slashed spending for environmental agencies, and support for agribusiness. As a result, between 2019 and 2021 alone—his first three years in office—34,000 square km of forest disappeared, an area larger than Belgium.
These policies were in keeping with a longstanding reflex of military regimes between 1964–85 that saw the Amazon as a vast developmental opportunity.
Questions for the left
Given Bolsonaro’s woeful policy record, there may be several reasons to explain the surprising strength of support he attracted in these elections.
His supporters have not been complacent, sinking organisational roots in swathes of society across a broad coalition that spans both Brazil’s huge interior as well as the more developed, urban south and south-east.
While the pillars of this movement are farmers and business, Bolsonaro attracts considerable backing within the security services and the rapidly expanding evangelical Christian right.
The social base of Bolsonarismo suggests a strong rightwards shift at the grassroots. He has lured alienated working-class voters with anti-establishment and often crude, misogynistic, aggressive and racist positions that evoke an image of an outspoken man of the people confronting a detached political elite, and then cemented support with cash handouts.
In a country divided by race and patriarchal traditions, many Brazilians have been seduced by Bolsonaro’s culturally conservative views and authoritarian proposals offering easy scapegoats for the many problems they face.
Photo Mauro Pimental
A resurgent religious right is a key component of the Bolsonaro coalition, with religion taking centre stage, something that favoured the right-wing incumbent given the rise of evangelicals who hate the left.
Bolsonaro’s authoritarian messages on law and order also resonated in a country racked by violent crime, and despite his lack of fiscal orthodoxy he retained the tribal support of business leaders instinctively hostile to the left.
Lula’s campaign
Nor was Lula’s campaign without blame, with some observers calling it lacklustre and absent of fresh ideas.
The former metalworker has impeccable working-class credentials and retains loyalties among Brazil’s poor, trade unionists and intelligentsia, but the right has made significant inroads among the 100 million or so members of the skilled working and lower-middle classes.
Gone was the sharply radical edge of yore during his campaign, with Lula now talking up the promise of stability, wooing more conservative opinion, and stressing his Christian faith.
He picked Geraldo Alckmin, a centre-right former governor, as his vice-presidential running mate, and signature themes of his former electoral persona, such as gender equality and environmental protection, were less prominent.
Critics said Lula’s campaign drew heavily on nostalgia and that the former president had shared few details of his precise economic plans other than promising to “rebuild Brazil” by restoring public services, beating inflation, and helping Brazilians facing food insecurity.
What happens next?
These factors mean that although Lula won, his real work is just beginning.
The success of conservatives in congressional elections will make it difficult for him to implement radical policies and deal with the host of problems bequeathed by Bolsonaro, who has left the country deeply polarised.
Brazilians remain deeply divided about Lula’s imprisonment, with pre-electoral polls suggesting 44% of voters still believe he was jailed rightfully and 40% that this was unjust.
Another challenge he faces will be improving Brazil’s relations with the US, which many on the left believe played a nefarious role behind the scenes in the political turmoil that has affected Brazil since the impeachment of Rousseff.
Lula himself has hinted that the President Barack Obama tried to sabotage him politically, and Bolsonaro enjoys considerable support among prominent far-right figures in the US.
Given Lula’s key former role as a broker with developing nations, Joe Biden’s administration is likely to make improving ties a priority, and the administration made it clear that, in this case, the US would not support a coup – at this stage.
The hope of many on the broad left in Brazil, therefore, is that with the Trump and Bolsonaro extremists in both countries exiled for now, Biden’s US and Brazil can draw closer around shared, so-called progressive aims. There may, indeed, be a thawing of relations between the two and a honeymoon period as Lula attempts a tricky balancing act.
However, in a period of profound international economic crisis, Lula’s government will be torn between fulfilling the expectation of the working class and those in desperate poverty, and satisfying the demands of big business to maintain and increase their profitability. Working people in Brazil will need to build and mobilise the independent strength of their own organisations to defend their interests.
