This Weekend A Vote On The Future Of Brazilian Democracy

 

Presidential campaign materials displayed in Rio de Janeiro(REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes)

Right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro stated to raucous supporters in So Paulo last fall that there was only one way he could be removed from office: "Only God can remove me."

However, regular Brazilians may do just that on Sunday when they cast their votes in an election with significant implications for the future of the fourth-largest democracy in the world.

Recent polls indicate that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Bolsonaro's main opponent in the race, may have a remote chance of winning an outright majority in this weekend's first round, avoiding the need for a two-person runoff three weeks from now. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has held a commanding lead in polls for more than a year.

But over the past two years, Bolsonaro has openly declared that he would lose the election and promised his supporters that he would "go to war" to keep his presidency from ending. Bolsonaro, a fervent supporter of former U.S. President Donald Trump, accused Brazil's electoral authorities of rigging the election in his favour and launched a barrage of criticisms against the country's electronic voting system, which experts consider to be among the safest and most effective in the world.

Bolsonaro and his right-wing party have recently given up on any pretence of a conventional campaign and appear to have given up on the possibility that he could win the election in a fair manner. The president has instead stepped up his attacks: According to a report from the New York Times, Bolsonaro's party this week released an official document that falsely claimed that Brazilian election observers could rig results "without leaving a trace of evidence."

The question hanging over Brazil's election with 24 hours left before the first ballot is cast is not whether Bolsonaro will try to cause a democratic rupture in response to a defeat, but rather what it might look like: military takeover? A Brazilian equivalent of the American Capitol uprising on January 6, 2021? An unhindered free election and peaceful transfer of power are disrupted by violence and chaos. or something entirely different?

Brazilian political analyst Thomas Traumann told HuffPost last month, "I'm sure that he will not concede." "I have no doubt that he will argue. He'll try to get people out on the streets by claiming he still won, I'm sure of it.

Brazil's election has become the most recent test of whether a right-wing movement that has benefited from legitimate elections over the past four years can successfully use its victories to completely overthrow a significant democracy due to the possibilities that have drawn attention from all over the world.

The stakes are very high. Brazil is the largest democracy in the Western Hemisphere, second only to the United States, and even a failed attempt at an authoritarian takeover would likely have repercussions throughout the Americas and the rest of the world.

Jair Bolsonaro, wearing yellow, has sought to mobilize his supporters in the hopes that they will help him cast doubt on the results of Sunday's election, especially if he loses outright in the first round of voting.

(AP PHOTO/ANDRE PENNER)

Whether or not he was legitimately elected, Bolsonaro's second term would allow him to build on the authoritarian gains of his first four years, during which he targeted the rights of Brazil's minority populations, including Black people, Indigenous tribes, and LGBTQ Brazilians, and undermined democratic institutions.

Environmentalists worry that it would spell disaster for the Amazon rainforest, which has under Bolsonaro's leadership seen record levels of deforestation, further impeding efforts to combat climate change on a global scale.

The election has drawn a lot of attention from both the US and EU. The U.S. Senate passed a resolution this week urging the Biden administration to "review and reconsider its relationship with any government that comes to power in Brazil through undemocratic means." Senior U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Bolsonaro and his allies to stop undermining the elections. Meanwhile, dozens of EU lawmakers this week argued for trade sanctions against Brazil in the event that Bolsonaro is successful in overturning the results.

The most worrying scenario—a military intervention on Bolsonaro's behalf—may be avoided thanks to those efforts. In order to sabotage the election, Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who has long expressed support for the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, has stacked his government with a record number of soldiers and relied on them. In order to implement the electoral reforms Bolsonaro demanded last year to address issues that election officials claim do not exist, the candidate's running mate, retired general Walter Braga Netto, reportedly threatened Brazil's Congress.

A coup attempt, however, has been viewed as unlikely by experts, in part because it lacks the support of the United States and other Western democracies that allowed the overthrow of a leftist government in 1964 during the Cold War. (Bolsonaro's attempts to reintegrate the armed forces into electoral politics have also been largely rejected by the financial elite and the media in Brazil, two other key pillars of support for that coup.)

With their Friday statement that they intended to respect the election results regardless of the outcome, senior Army officials appeared to allay any remaining concerns about how the institutional armed forces would respond.

However, a reenactment of the Jan. 6 uprising at the US Capitol may be more likely. On September 7, the day of Brazil's independence, Bolsonaro organised large rallies to show off his ability to organise his base.

The size of those protests has already been used by Bolsonaro and his supporters to cast doubt on the polls. If and when he does question the results, he will probably do so by referencing the photos from those events, much like Trump did when he cited the size of the crowds at his own rallies in 2020, to argue that the results can't be trusted because "true Brazilians" didn't vote that way.

After the rallies, Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, predicted that they would serve as the foundation for his refusal to accept the election results.

For months, Brazil's two main electoral institutions, the Supreme Court and the Superior Electoral Tribunal, have been preparing for scenarios in which Bolsonaro tries to contest the results. However, he still enjoys the support of almost one-third of Brazilians, and many of them are gullible enough to believe his conspiratorial claims, which have proliferated on social media platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, two chat services that are popular in Brazil and have been associated with fake news campaigns that have aided in the radicalization of the country's right.

A potential election dispute raises concerns about how rogue members of Brazil's violent police forces, who have shown a great deal of support for his election conspiracy theories, will respond.

According to experts, if Bolsonaro loses in the first round, he will be weaker and probably won't be able to mount a serious challenge to Brazil's democracy. However, this does not imply that he won't try or that his allies and supporters won't make an effort on his behalf. Over the past four years, Bolsonaro has increased Brazilians' access to firearms, and many of his supporters are now well-armed and bragging about it in advance of any potential election squabble.

A Brazilian political expert at the Getlio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo, Guilherme Casares, declared that "the beast that Bolsonaro has created is pretty much out of control." "We're talking about 700,000 new gun licence holders in Brazil. We're referring to members of the [police] forces and a few military personnel who are really eager to support Bolsonaro's authoritarian tendencies.

Casares claimed that Bolsonaro was "trapped in his own radicalism" because most people around him "are probably not going to let Bolsonaro just give up on his candidacy or the presidency."

Violence has already tainted Brazil's election season. Bolsonaro supporters have launched worse assaults and thrown urine and faeces at crowds at da Silva's events. A Bolsonaro supporter killed a worker from da Silva's Workers' Party at a birthday celebration in July. This week, a da Silva supporter who had promised to cast his ballot for the former president this weekend was stabbed and killed in a bar.

Fears that more violence could erupt at voting centers, rallies or other events have consumed many Brazilians, more than one-third of whom now say they’re uncomfortable discussing their vote with others, according to a recent poll.

Bolsonaro won the presidency of Brazil four years ago on the back of populist discontent with the country's political establishment. He did so by leveraging resentment over the country's crumbling economy, rising violent crime rates, and political corruption to defeat many oddsmakers.

At the time, Da Silva, who was imprisoned for corruption and disqualified from running, represented many of these issues, which provided the ideal environment for a politician like Bolsonaro, who has always seen the left and its policies as the biggest threat to Brazil. Especially those that support the rights of the nation's minority populations.

But four years later, the Brazilian economy and Bolsonaro's management of it have taken centre stage in the election. Da Silva has concentrated on the subject, promising Brazilians that he will bring them the same prosperity that the nation experienced when its economy grew during his eight years as president. His conviction was overturned last year due to judicial irregularities.

In response to the skyrocketing food prices that have caused hunger rates to soar and left many poorer Brazilians unable to afford the beef that is a mainstay of traditional weekend cookouts, Da Silva has vowed to restore Brazilians' "right to barbecue."

During a nationally televised interview last month, he said: "The people have to go back to eating a barbecue, eating a picanha, and having a beer." This statement sparked sales of online merchandise with the potentially potent, if unofficial, slogan: "Steak, beer, and Lula 2022."

Despite the recent improvement in the economy, Bolsonaro has been unable to adapt. He has demonstrated that he is incapable of approaching the election in any other way because to him, it has always been a struggle between "good vs. evil."

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, centre, runs for office again with the Workers' Party on September 30, 2022 in Salvador, Brazil. Brazil's general elections are set for October 2. .(AP PHOTO/RAPHAEL MULLER)

Although it has enraged his supporters, most Brazilians are turned off by that. Similar to Trump, Bolsonaro's reelection strategy was flawed because he was elected president in 2018 not because most Brazilians agreed with everything he stood for but rather as an alternative to a broken political system that needed complete overhaul.

Now that Bolsonaro is the system, many Brazilians who held their nose and supported him in 2018 appear weary of the violent rhetoric, disorganised politics, and anti-democratic rule that characterise Bolsonarismo.

Santoro told HuffPost last month that "clearly, he's not as strong now as he was four years ago when he was the man of the moment." He now appears to be a politician who is losing support.

Women have turned against Bolsonaro in droves because of his machismo-driven politics, his careless handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and his lack of attention to the economy. The majority of Brazilians as a whole say they will never vote for him.

The majority of da Silva's campaign's efforts in recent weeks have been directed toward encouraging voters to cast ballots, particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds who are typically more likely to support the left but less likely to do so even though voting is required in Brazil. They have also made an effort to persuade supporters of opposing candidates to cast strategically important votes for da Silva in the hopes of helping him win Sunday's election.

They feel that a first-round victory would neutralise Bolsonaro's attempts to rig the election. Contrarily, three more weeks of campaigning could endanger Brazil's democracy even more than it already is.

The second round will give Bolsonaro an extra month to stir up as much commotion as he can, Casares claimed.