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The first round of voting in Brazil’s presidential election takes place on the 2nd of October, the same day as the general election, in which all 550 seats in Congress are at stake, but it is the race between Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro that will be most consequential.
Brazilians will go to the polls on the 2nd of October, and most likely again on the 30th of October, to cast their votes for the country’s next president and the choice facing the electorate is between two diametrically opposed candidates. On the one hand, the incumbent, far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro, espouses a programme that prioritises the preservation of the ‘traditional’, heterosexual family and advocates deregulation and privatisation as the path to prosperity while the opposition candidate and once-disgraced two-term ex-president, Lula, of the Workers’ Party (PT) carries a prior record of robust environmental protections against deforestation and oversaw attempts to build a country that is more economically and socially inclusive. In light of this stark contrast, the campaign has been rancorous, with Lula branding Bolsonaro a ‘devil’, while supporters of the incumbent have frequently engaged in stunts and political violence designed to disrupt rallies held by Lula’s supporters.
Who are the candidates?
Both principal candidates for the presidency place great emphasis on their humble upbringings in the state of São Paulo but, beyond this coincidence, their differences far outweigh their similarities.
Jair Bolsonaro, the incumbent and far-right provocateur, is an ex-army captain, who rose through the ranks during the years of Brazil’s military dictatorship and who, in the first years of the new democratic republic, made a name for himself by appearing on talk-shows and giving magazine interviews to protest against cuts to the armed forces made by the new regime. Most infamously, he was imprisoned for 15 days following an interview with Veja. In light of Bolsonaro’s fervent defence of the military dictatorship,
Anthony Pereira, a professor of Brazilian studies at King’s College London (KCL) has noted in a recent documentary that Bolsonaro is frustrated by the perceived ingratitude of the Brazilian people towards the former military leaders, despite what the current president regards as the significant achievements of the regime. These grievances motivated his first ventures into politics as he entered the Chamber of Deputies in Congress in 1990, where he remained a fringe figure for most of his tenure.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian media developed a complex relationship with Bolsonaro, simultaneously providing a platform for his homophobic and misogynistic outbursts and recognising that the views expressed in these tirades and their combative tone crossed the boundaries of common decency. For example, Bolsonaro made political correctness and ‘gender ideology’ a key target for his attacks. In one particularly infamous 2014 incident, he became physically aggressive towards Maria do Rosario, a leftist member of Congress, and told that she ‘did not deserve to be raped’, with the implication that she was too ugly, while also branding her a ‘whore’. The incident made national headlines and Bolsonaro made an attempt to justify his remarks on a show anchored by Joice Hasselmann, a fellow right-wing politician, who would later become the leader of Bolsonaro’s government in Congress.
Bolsonaro’s quiet rise thus began during Lula’s tenure as president, which is remembered by his supporters domestically and by much of the international community as a time of prosperity. For many, Lula’s accession to the presidency represented a moment of great hope because, as the first Workers’ Party president and the first ex-trade unionist to become president, his rise appeared to signal a radical break with the dictatorship’s legacy of gaping inequality and the political persecution of leftists. The flagship policy of his first term was the Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance), a package of family benefits that is conditional on parents ensuring that children attend school and are properly vaccinated and which was widely regarded as a success. The spread of the scheme coincided with a reduction of the proportion of the Brazilian population living in absolute poverty from 13% to 3% by 2015 according to World Bank estimates.
Following Lula’s retreat from frontline politics once his tenure reached its two-term limit, the Brazilian political establishment became mired in a corruption scandal of unprecedented gravity and scale. One-third of all members of Congress were implicated in Operaçao Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), which uncovered a widespread culture of bribery and kickbacks between politicians and construction companies, as well as Petrobras, the state-run oil firm. In 2017, Lula was identified as a ringleader and tried for his apparent wrongdoing, eventually being sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in jail by the judge, Sergio Moro, whose role in proceedings remains a source of intrigue and controversy in light of his subsequent appointment to lead the Ministry of Justice in Bolsonaro’s government. Then, following an unsuccessful appeal against his sentence, Lula was barred from all political activities.
The 2018 campaign and Bolsonaro’s presidency
In the wake of Lula’s imprisonment, the PT was forced to put forward a new candidate for the presidency and Fernando Haddad, the former mayor of São Paulo and Lula’s original running mate, emerged as his successor. Although Lula had enjoyed a healthy lead in the polls before his campaign was derailed, Bolsonaro immediately overtook Haddad, opening up an initial seven-point lead.
In this situation, Bolsonaro’s previous status as a marginal figure in Brazilian politics proved a major asset as he was able to distance himself from the sections of the establishment that became embroiled in Operation Car Wash and he placed the sweeping pledge to ‘clean up’ Brazil at the centre of his campaign. Bolsonaro exploited this narrative far beyond the immediate controversies of the corruption probe, taking advantage of the reach and immediacy of social media to paint a picture of a country in which social decadence, embodied largely in the bête noire of so-called ‘gender ideology’, had become rampant. His son, Eduardo, was instrumental in executing these tactics, best exemplified by the false claim, devised as a smear against Haddad by the Bolsonaro campaign, that the PT candidate had distributed penis-shaped bottles for babies during tenure as the mayor of Brazil’s largest city.
With tactics such as these, Bolsonaro also successfully mobilised large of the fast-growing Evangelical Christian community in Brazil, campaigning under a slogan of ‘Brazil above everything, God above everyone’. Bolsonaro ultimately emerged victorious in the run-off, winning 55% of the vote, completing his journey from the political fringes to the centre of power.
Bolsonaro’s stint in power has been equally as controversial as the rest of his political career, as he has presided over unprecedented levels of destruction in the Amazon rainforest, a development which, his critics argue, is a direct result of his policies. The current president regards excessive environmental regulation as a shackle on Brazil’s economic potential and views the Amazon primarily as a source of mineral wealth, rejecting outright the common characterisation of the rainforest as the ‘lungs of the earth’; he branded this description a ‘fallacy’ in an address to the UN General Assembly in 2019. In the same year, the Amazon saw a 30% increase in deforestation on the previous year, alongside an 84% increase in the number of fires, most of which, it is believed were started deliberately. In a bid to pave the way for further exploitation of the Amazon’s resources, Bolsonaro had slashed the budget of IBAMA, the protection agency controlled by the Ministry of the Environment and of FUNAI- the National Indian Foundation, which concerns itself which protecting Brazil’s indigenous communities. In response to these policies and the subsequent increase in incursions onto indigenous land, the Brazilian Indigenous Peoples’ Association (APIB) submitted a request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that Bolsonaro be investigated for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Bolsonaro’s response to disasters came under scrutiny once more as the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) spread across Brazil. He has often been of the virus’ impact, describing it as ‘at most a little flu or little cold’ and boasting that his athletic prowess would protect him from any adverse effects. Despite the president’s attitude, at the time of writing, 686,000 people have died as a result of a coronavirus infection while, at the height of the pandemic, cities such as Manaus in the Amazon experienced critical shortages of oxygen— a state of affairs which led the Senate in Congress to conduct an inquiry into Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic. The enquiry shocked Brazil when it published its 1,200-page report calling for the president to face charges for various crimes including incitement, misuse of public funds and, most significantly, crimes against humanity.
It is highly unlikely that the charges would ever proceed, because the power to launch legal proceedings rests with the prosecutor-general, who was appointed by Bolsonaro and remains a close ally, although 2021 brought another blow for Bolsonaro that could potentially be fatal to his campaign: Lula’s convictions were quashed and he was cleared to resume political activities. In response, Bolsonaro organised a military parade, in which tanks rolled past the Supreme Court.
On the 8th of March 2021, Lula’s convictions were quashed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the presiding judge, Sergio Moro, had been biased in his assessment of the evidence and that, given the precise details of the evidence presented during the trial, Moro, as a federal judge, did not have jurisdiction over the case.
The 2022 Campaign
Bolsonaro once proclaimed that ‘only one of three things’ would happen to him— prison, death, or victory— during his second campaign (he survived an assassination attempt during the 2018 campaign), but he is facing an uphill battle against Lula, whose poll lead in the weeks leading up to the election has been estimated to be anywhere between 10 to 16 percentage points in the first round, while his advantage extends to 19 points when voters are asked to choose only between the two main candidates. Bolsonaro has also invoked the ‘devil’ slur against his opponent, though appending the claim that Lula wishes to ‘impose communism on Brazil’ and emulate Nicaragua, where a former leftist revolutionary-turned president is waging a campaign against the clergy. This far-fetched comparison was made only last week, but appears to have been in vain as it had no effect on Lula’s lead.
Lula’s central pledge has been to ‘bring happiness back to Brazil’ by reviving the ethos of his first wo terms, during which the state became increasingly interventionist. In a recent interview with The Economist, Lula reiterated his conviction that, ‘if the government doesn’t take initiative [...] things don’t get done’, a view that finds expression in the PT candidate’s pledge to expand public banks to fund infrastructure projects and to implement a ‘national food reserves policy’. However, just as he did during the 2002 campaign, Lula is simultaneously attempting to assuage the fears expressed by some of his opponents and the business community, stating, for example, that he would not reverse Bolsonaro’s privatisation of Eletrobras, the state power company.
The campaign remains bitter in spite of Lula’s attempts to broaden his appeal however, with two of his supporters dying at the hands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists— PT treasurer Marcelo de Arruda was shot by an off-duty prison guard in July while, in early September, Benedito Cardoso dos Santos, was shot at a rally in the state of Mato Grosso. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro has stoked fears has he will not relinquish power if he loses the election, declaring that a rally on the 7th of September, Brazil’s Independence Day, would be the ‘last time’ his supporters would take to the streets.
Against this backdrop, the world is holding its breath, awaiting the outcome of the presidential election as the much-feared authoritarian turn, should Bolsonaro refuse to concede, would be widely regarded as a fundamental setback to democracy. More tangibly though, this vote will be crucial in the world’s fight against the climate crisis as the identity of the Amazon’s next custodian will determine the future of the rainforest.