113 - Brazil's Important Triumph Over Trumpist Fascism
“He’s not the solution to every problem. But he’s our only hope,” said a 30-year-old librarian, after casting her ballot for Brazil’s next president, 77-year old Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in Rio de Janeiro.
Lula’s margin of victory over current President Jair Bolsonaro was slim, by fewer than two percentage points (far less than pollsters had predicted), but it showed that a majority of Brazilians had had enough of Bolsonaro’s Trump-like wild attacks on their voting systems and his hankering for strong man rule. They also seem to have regarded his reputation for corruption and nepotism as more heinous than Lula’s conviction for influence peddling. Lula decried Bolsonaro’s refusal to take the coronavirus pandemic seriously, and his failure to help save local lives by ordering vaccines. Lula further promised to reverse Bolsonaro’s raping of the Amazonian rainforest.
Lula’s triumph, and his return to Brazil’s presidency after a twelve year hiatus, also overcame attempts by federal highway police to keep voters in areas favorable to Lula from reaching the polls. At least 500 buses carrying would-be voters were halted by police blockades on their way to balloting places. Nevertheless, about 80 percent of eligible voters turned out, a respectable number given pro-Bolsonaro obstacles.
Fortunately, in Brazil control of the electoral process is at the federal judicial (not the state) level. Thus there are uniform methods of credentialing voters and counting and reporting the results. Furthermore, the head of a separate federal electoral court controls the entire process and sanctions those (like some Federal Highway Police commanders) who tried to interfere with free and fair balloting.
Lula was a very popular president, at all societal levels, between 2003 and 2010. An authentic member of his country’s laboring class, and a successful hard-scrabble trade unionist, he uplifted Brazil by its bootstraps. GDP per capita rose across the board; Brazil was then one of the globe’s most unequal societies, so he redistributed state funds to the poor and improved the nation’s infrastructure while elevating his country’s world standing. Under Lula, Brazil began paying attention to and investing in the Lusophone African territories like Angola, Mozambique, São Tomé, and Guinea-Bissau.
Bolsonaro — the so-called “Trump of the Tropics” — will be out of office, and his Trumpist accusations and rantings will be sidelined. But Bolsonaro’s supporters have increased their hold on Brazil’s lower house of Congress. This reality will make Lula, who previously governed with the full support of the country’s Congress, struggle to fulfill his mandate to legislate progressively. Critically, he campaigned to respect the environmental sanctity of the Amazon rainforest and to roll back Bolsonaro’s willingness to convert its vast tree cover into cattle pastures and soy plantations. Lula believes in global warming and wants to let the Amazon remain a carbon dioxide sink. Bolsonaro was a climate change denier and his followers in Congress – many of whom have been in the pay of would-be Amazonian developers – may oppose anything that Lula suggests to safeguard the planet.
Lula is likely to back the Biden administration regarding climate issues, and also regarding Ukraine. Trade with the United States is likely to strengthen. But Brazil depends on China for the bulk of its soybean and beef exports, and that profitable relationship will continue.
At home, Lula will want to reunite the Brazilian polity, attempt to reduce the polarization that has disturbed its 215 million people, and bring respect for democratic tolerance back to a vast land that could now become a beacon of sense and sensibility in the Western Hemisphere.
Lula will face major fiscal issues, however. Bolsonaro spent wildly and helped to plunge Brazil deeper into recession. The global economic situation will not help Lula, either, as he attempts to work the magic that made Brazilians wealthy during 2003-2010.
Whether Lula, despite or because of his imprisonment for 580 days for accepting corporate payoffs, will toughen Brazil’s treatment of corruption crimes is as yet unknown. Fortunately, however, the judiciary has demonstrated its independence by freeing him from jail (the electoral court ruled that Lula’s conviction had been marred by improper prosecutorial planning and collaboration with the presiding judge) while simultaneously upholding nearly all of the other results of the Lava Jato (Car Wash) decisions of 2014-2017 that put dozens of politicians, bureaucrats, and business persons in prison and broke Brazil’s long tolerance of kickbacks, high level peculation, and other malfeasance by corporate moguls and political bosses.
There will be pressure on Lula and his attorney general to investigate Bolsonaro and his three sons for a clutch of alleged crimes. Bolsonaro and his family have been accused of embezzling public funds, stealing staff wages, and mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic. The family may have purchased dozens of properties with cash siphoned from personnel kickbacks. Bolsonaro apparently also allowed members of Congress to grant themselves as much as $8 billion worth of funding from a “secret budget” agreed by Bolsonaro. Then there are the secrecy classifications that Bolsonaro imposed on communications with the public and lists of visitors to the presidency. Lula says that he will immediately (after January 1) undo those secrecy decrees.
Lula is a very common sense leftist with pragmatic instincts. Just possibly his upcoming presidency will diminish the appeal of Trumpish antics in Brazil and across the globe. His return to office at least may return one very large global democracy to the side of truth-telling and integrity in public life.
PS - Bolsonaro may try tonight on TV to whip-up his supporters to rampage against Lula, using the Jan. 6 outrage as his model.