When Jair Bolsonaro was elected as the 38thpresident of Brazil on 28thOctober 2018 it was the book end that drew to a close the right wing election victories that took in the Brexit referendum, the Trump election, the election of Iván Duque in Colombia and the rise of right wing movements across Europe. It was a bizarre and shocking campaign which saw him get stabbed in the stomach at a rally in Juiz de Fora in an assassination attempt, meaning that he was unable to take part in any of the television debates. Whilst he was ahead in the polls throughout it seemed that a candidate, who is even more shocking and out spoken than Donald Trump, could ever be president, purely for the amount of offence that he had caused to minorities including women, LGBTQ people and African descendants. You only have to Google his name to find a list of articles and videos providing compilations of his most shocking outbursts which are highly offensive. He also advocates more flexible gun ownership regulation for citizens, something that has recently been written into law, in the aim of giving greater protection against violent crime, which is a serious problem in Brazil. His threat to pull out of the Paris Climate agreement of 2015 is also a deep cause for concern, in a country that has most of the world’s tropical rain forest in its territory, as is his support of General Pinochet’s use of torture in the Chilean dictatorship.
Bolsonaro is a strange combination of populist and establishment. He has been a sitting member of Brazil’s lower house for over 30 years and he had a reputation as a maverick but also someone very much in the background. A military man who reached the rank of Captain in the army, he showed his loyalty and faith to the armed forces by appointing Hamilton Mourão, a retired general, as his vice president. In fact Bolsonaro was biding his time rather shrewdly judging by the convincing nature of his victory (he gained 55% of votes in the second round). He was a leading critic of Dilma Rousseff and her party and was a fervent supporter of the impeachment that lost Dilma the presidency in 2016. He was also very close to the subsequent President Michel Temer who started the right wing transformation of government that Bolsonaro took up.
Politics goes in waves and eventually people vote for a change of direction; a near perfect storm for the left wing Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) meant that they were doomed to lose this election from the outset. First of all the original and preferred candidate (and past president) Lula da Silva was imprisoned on corruption charges in April of 2018 meaning that the eventual candidate, Fernando Haddad, really did not have sufficient time to start his own campaign and became the default candidate. An ex-mayor of São Paulo and a very able politician, he made some key errors in the campaign the worst of all being, going to visit the ex-president in prison on a weekly basis. We can only speculate what these meetings were about, but to the local press it was seen as the pupil getting advice from his mentor. Haddad also did not make any attempt to apologize or atone for the wrongdoings of his party in terms of the corruption during the campaign. It is worth mentioning that if Lula had not been imprisoned he would likely have won the presidency again from indications of the polls at the time of his arrest, such is the messianic appeal that the man has to his supporters.
The Workers Party was in power for thirteen years from 2003-2016, which is a long time for any party to rule in a democracy. Lula was elected on a surge of optimism for the future which was so present in the tens, and his socialist policies were exactly what Brazil needed at the time. He successfully implemented social welfare programmes like “Bolsa Família” a system which paid low income families to keep their children in school and later “Minha casa, minha vida” which meant that people could apply to the government for a grant to buy a property. Both of these policies were extremely successful in giving people a higher quality of life and more financial security. And for a while Brazil seemed to be on a high. It successfully bid and won the right to host both the Football World Cup (2014) and the Summer Olympic Games (2016) in two years, an achievement that no other country has done before. Surely this was the start of a new era for the sleeping giant of South America. These large sporting events did ensure that Brazil was in the world spotlight for the right reasons for the first time in living memory. However there were claims that Brazil was biting off more than it could chew; that one of these mega events would have been more than enough to do its job of raising the profile of the nation in the world’s eyes. Many of the venues used for the games are still sitting empty and dilapidated.
In the event the impeachment process of Dilma Rousseff had actually commenced by the time the Olympics came around and at a time when Brazil was meant to be basking in the glory of international attention and reaping the rewards of its hard work, the focus was split between the sport in Rio de Janeiro and the impending impeachment of its first female president for corruption charges in Brasília. The final impeachment vote took place on 31stAugust 2016 just ten days after the end of the Olympics.
Corruption would be the downfall of the Workers Party in the end. Two major corruption scandals were uncovered by lawyers; the first was known as the “mensalão” scandal in 2005 whereby politicians were being bribed on a monthly basis to vote for government proposals in a supply and demand agreement which is not legal in Brazilian law.
Whilst this was a shocking revelation it was totally eclipsed by what was to come later down the line, the mother of all corruption scandals, known as the “car wash” scandal (known as “Lava-Jato”). This was a sophisticated operation whereby executives would use the state owned oil company, Petrobras, to launder money in the form of taking bribes to award lucrative contracts. The ruling politicians at the time claimed to not know of the goings on of Petrobras, but critics accused them of turning a blind eye which would eventually lead to the charge of “passive corruption”. In total an estimated US$9.5 billion was laundered making it the biggest corruption operation in Latin American history, a region that is not unfamiliar to the practice. Dilma Rousseff took the brunt of the public and political anger for this (ongoing) legal case, and was the decisive factor in her impeachment trial.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Brazil’s already serious problem with violent crime rose at an exponential level during the Workers Party time in office. This reached its peak in 2017 (albeit the year after Rousseff left office) when 64,000 homicides were reported, the highest number (though not rate) of murders in any country in the world. According to El País newspaper it is “The country that kills the most.” It points out that more people die in Brazil on a regular basis than in Iraq or Syria. In this way Brazil is disadvantaged by bordering many of the major cocaine producers in the world, namely Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, meaning that much of the narcotic trafficking goes through large Brazilian cities on the way to Europe and the United States. These well-trodden paths for the drug gangs have inevitable and appalling knock on effects for the communities that they touch.
To top it all Brazil went into recession in 2014 in their financial crisis, the effects of which are still being felt today in 2019. Unlike the subprime market crash in the US and the subsequent recession of 2008, the 2014 Brazilian recession was blamed solely on mismanagement at government level and unsurprisingly corruption and the inevitable waste of capital that goes with it.
With all of this in mind is it any wonder that Brazilians voted for a change? It seems difficult to understand why Brazil, which is so rich in natural resources is not a wealthier country. It is the largest producer of coffee and sugar in the world and is a significant exporter of iron ore, crude petroleum, soyabean, meat and poultry to name just a few. Why was it that the United States a country with a similar history, had flourished so much and Brazil was so far behind? There are many facets to the answer of that particular question, but one issue is the high taxes that Brazilian companies are bound to, in stark contrast to the US. Why not let the private sector drive the growth as opposed to allowing the politicians to take such a large share of the profits? Especially in a country where corruption is such a huge problem and much of tax revenue ends up lining the pockets of politicians? This is something that Bolsonaro has promised to do, and his appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum was to this extent, announcing to the World that “Brazil was open for business”. If he manages to do this he will certainly improve the finances of the country which is still very closed economically, on an international level.
Brazil faces some significant obstacles in the goal of overcoming its financial problems. Most pressing of all is the challenge of its ever rising national debt and the interest connected to it. And the reform of its generous current pension scheme which takes up a large part of GDP.
With all of this in mind it makes it easier to understand why the Brazilians did not vote for another socialist government and opted for a move to the right. There were other more moderate candidates in the first round of the election such as Geraldo Alckmin or Ciro Gomes who might have stood a better chance in the second round. These were more centre politicians who were far less polemic and extreme. But it seems that the reaction and backlash against left wing politics, meant that there was an appetite for radical change in the political landscape which fed into Bolsonaro’s conservative and deeply religious agenda. Although he is himself a Catholic, his wife is an Evangelical, and he managed to tap into the latters’ growing influence and power in the country. Once he had made it through to the second round in a head to head against a Worker’s party candidate, there was likely to be only one winner.
The unpalatability of some of the comments Bolsonaro has made cannot be changed and it seems unlikely that he is going to retract them, but if he can implement some of the fiscal reforms that he has pledged to do then he will undoubtedly improve the financial situation of his country, and create more opportunities for its citizens, in the goal of making Brazil a safer and more prosperous place to live. Whether he can achieve this and whether this is enough to compensate for the hurt that he has caused by his vitriolic outbursts remains to be seen.
WilliamGAFrost 