Escrito pela minha amiga Mônica Arruda, jornalista e professora do Instituto de Estudos Latino-americanos da Georgetown University (Washington, D. C.), este artigo é, de longe, a melhor e mais objetiva análise da candidatura Bolsonaro que li até agora — em qualquer língua!
“Brazil’s 2018 National
Elections and the Politics of Branding:
Why Brazilians are voting for Jair Bolsonaro”
Far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro of the Social
Liberal Party (PSL) was unable to beat Fernando Haddad of the Workers’ Party
(PT) outright in the opening round of Brazil’s election on October 7 by a mere
5% of the vote. For months, international
coverage of the election has been dominated by a mix of bewilderment and disappointment
over Bolsonaro’s leading performance in the polls. With only a few attempts to genuinely
understand what has led almost 50 million Brazilians to vote for Bolsonaro,[1]
international coverage of the election has consistently branded Bolsonaro, 63, a
misogynist, homophobic, dictatorial, xenophobic, fascist, nazi, racist, and populist.
The pejorative branding of Bolsonaro has
been so successful that news outlets with dissimilar editorial leanings have
condemned him equally. From the British The Guardian, to the French Le Monde, to The Economist, which authoritatively
declared that Bolsonaro is not the man to solve Brazil’s problems, the PSL
candidate’s unusual talent to stir controversy has diverted international media
attention away from the reasons for his success. Why is such seemingly
objectionable candidate is the favorite to become Brazil’s next president?
In such a complex presidential election there is
really no single explanation for Bolsonaro’s popularity. But for both Bolsonaro’s original supporters
and the more centrist voters who will now support him in the second round of the
elections scheduled for October 28, a vote for Bolsonaro is a vote to protect
democracy in Brazil. These voters
associate the 13 years (2003 – 2016) in which the Workers’ Party (PT)
controlled the presidency as a period of pervasive corruption on a scale never
experienced before. Widespread
cooptation has also been a mark of the PT administrations, where not only the poor
were targeted via assistentialism, but also artists and other opinion shapers. Even well-established powerful economic
groups, such as Odebrecht, were rewarded with billionaire sweet deals by the PT
administrations, all paid with tax payers’ money through the country’s largest
development bank, the BNDES. In some
cases, billions of dollars were siphoned from the state through bribery and
diverted to both personal enrichment and illicit campaign financing. Few federal ministries and State-Owned
Enterprises (SOEs), including public banks, remained free from involvement in
major corruption schemes. The most well-known of all anti-corruption police
efforts, the Car Wash
(Lava Jato) Investigation, for example, has been active for over four years
and gives no sign of concluding anytime soon.
Hundreds
of people have been indicted, convicted or imprisoned, with over US $ 10
billion having been recovered and returned to the state. Not to mention the
damage that Brazil’s corruption schemes have caused to other democratic, and
not so democratic, countries.
This is relevant because the PT presidential
campaign has given no sign that it is willing to reexamine its past practices or
offer guarantees that it will strengthen Brazil’s prosecutorial and
investigative efforts. Much to the
contrary. The PT
government program is proposing to cut spending and “privileges” in the
judicial system and to establish term limits for justices in the Supreme Court
and other superior courts, whose members will be nominated with greater
participation of organized civil society. The party also proposes to impose a
wide range of restrictions on traditional media because they allegedly curtail
plurality of viewpoints. Lula’s party
has moved so far to the left that, as history professor Marco Antônio Villa
analyzed during a popular radio news show, unabashedly defends policies that
resemble many of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian playbook. The PT program proposes, among other
changes, ample state reform that includes the adoption of direct democratic
initiatives to combat, according to the document, fascist and authoritarian
segments currently present in Brazilian representative government. The document
further defends that the nation’s President is granted the authority to
initiate plebiscites and referendums, a right that is currently
constitutionally given to Congress only (Article no. 49). They further want to encourage social groups’
control of each one of the state’s three powers (executive, legislative, and
judiciary), where, for example, gender parity and ethnic-racial quotas will be
set and strictly enforced. These reforms would be possible through a new
federal constitution written by a constituent assembly. Fears
of the party moving too far to the left are reinforced by its choice for
Haddad’s vice president, Manuela D’Ávila, 37, a former student leader and
politician from Brazil’s Communist Party (PC do B). Not to mention Haddad’s
commitment to pardon Lula if elected president, and Lula’s open threats to imprison
Lava-Jato Investigation’s main judge, Sérgio Moro, once he is freed. A sentiment that is being nurtured among the
PT supporters.
Undoubtedly Brazilians are voting for Bolsonaro out
of fear of the country becoming another “Venezuela.” However, despair about many years of
government’s failure, at all levels, in dealing with citizen security is also
at play in this year’s election. In 2016
alone, there were 62,517 homicides in the country, according to government
figures. Between 2001 and 2015, the
number reaches 786,000 homicides. If one
compares the number of homicides during the wars in Iraq (286,000, from 2003 to
2017) and in Syria (330,000, from 2011 to 2017), it becomes clear that Brazil
is at war, but an undeclared war. That is why Bolsonaro’s voters are hoping for
a strong government, not an authoritarian one, that is capable of dealing with
public security.
Bolsonaro’s
Self-Destructive Statements –
Although for many Brazilians a vote to Bolsonaro is
a vote against the PT, there are some who genuinely admire him for his
reputation, earned over a 27 year Congressional career, for being incorruptible. Supporters believe that much of the
pejorative branding that Bolsonaro has earned abroad and at home, the latter
symbolized by the massive campaign “#ELE NÃO” (or #NOT HIM), is unfair. Bolsonaro is frequently caught by saying the
most offensive statements, which they argue, are often taken out of
context. The PSL candidate was being relatively
successful at explaining much of his outrageous past statements in recent
interviews (watch, for example, his interview at
GloboNews), until he suffered an assassination
attempt on September 6 that kept him off of the presidential campaign
trail.
One of Bolsonaro’s past hair-raising
arguments that is often brought out occurred during an argument with Congresswoman
Maria do Rosário (PT) in 2003. The
incident occurred when Bolsonaro was defending a reduction of age of criminal
responsibility from 18 to 16 after a horrific case of rape and murder by a
teenager. Do Rosário was against the
proposal and said that the 16 year old suspect was just “a child.” At some point,
during the ensuing argument, Rosário called Bolosnaro a rapist. Bolsonaro then irresponsibly replied by
saying that Rosário was too ugly to be raped.
There are many other cases in which Bolsonaro foolishly put himself in
trouble, raising serious questions about his emotional control and overall
presidential temperament. His choice for
vice-president, retired general Hamilton Mourão, 65, does very little if anything
to reassure Brazilians that they will have a drama-free government under
Bolsonaro. Mourão has also generated
controversy many times with his own outlandish statements.[2] But, for many, Bolsonaro’s greatest appeal is
his pro-market program, which proposes to reduce the size of the state and its
role on economy, lower taxes, and ambitious trade liberalization, a key stance
for many Bolsonaro’s voters, who tend to be younger and better educated. Plus, the PSL program defends greater alliance
with countries from which Brazil can benefit from technology transfer, such as
the US, Israel, and Japan to name a few. This is in stark contrast to the PT’s
foreign policy proposal, which contends that Brazil should combat “imperialist
aggressions,” coming mostly from the US, and promote greater South-South
alliance, with countries from Latin America, Africa, South Asia and the Middle
East.
Despite the praise of dictatorship by Brazil’s
leading presidential candidate (along with his homophobic, intolerant, and rude
jokes), support
for democracy has reached an all-time high in the thirty years that surveys
on the topic have been conducted. According to Datafolha, 69% of Brazilians
believe that democracy is the best form of government. This sentiment is across
the board, regardless of age, race, education, income, and social status. On
the other side of the coin, the percentage of respondents who agreed with the
statement that “they are indifferent to the form of government, be it a
democracy or dictatorship” fell from an all-time high in 1989, when 22% of
people surveyed supported the statement, to 13% early this month. This is
certainly a reassuring result in Brazil, whose democratic Constitution celebrates
its 30th anniversary this year. Unfortunately, though, support for
democracy alone does not make this year’s presidential race any easier for
Brazilians who are being asked to choose between the intolerant and insensitive
far right and the corrupt far left. No wonder years-long friendships and family
relations are currently being tested in Brazil’s social media. This begs the
question: How about you, attentive
reader, for whom would you vote?
[1] See for example, “In Brazil, nostalgia grows for the dictatorship —
not the brutality, but the law and order,” by Marina Lopes. Washington Post, March 15, 2018.
[2] Perhaps Eduardo Jorge, of Brazil’s Green Party and vice-candidate
for Marina da Silva (REDE) in this year’s election, best summarized many
people’s views of general Mourão: “A
good man but with strong authoritarian views. The best thing that could happen
was to leave him retired and at home.”
Interview Radio Jovem Pan, September 14, 2018.
