Workers’ Party (PT) candidate, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, He got 48% of the votes in the Brazilian general elections, ahead of incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), which has 43%. This gap was the narrowest in the first round of the presidential election since re-democratization. It was also the first time the incumbent president did not finish the first round as the most voted candidate.
Despite Lula’s achievement, the feeling among his supporters is disappointment. Lula has already assumed the possibility of not winning the election on Sunday. What was not expected was that the distance to Bolsonaro was only 5 percentage points. On the eve of the election, polls had expected the difference between the two to be about 14 percentage points. Nor were Bolsonaro’s candidates for Senate, House of Representatives and state governments expected to do well.
All this data indicates that Lula was able to overtake Bolsonaro in the presidential elections, but the left was not able to stop the power of Bolsonaro.
In Sao Paulo, the Labor Party candidate for the state government, Fernando Haddad, has run at the polls throughout the election campaign, but ended up on Sunday behind the Bolsonaro-backed candidate, Tarcisio de Freitas. The two now pass into the second round and the definition of the election is completely open. Candidates who are ideologically close to Bolsonaro won the first round in important states such as Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro. The expectation was that Lula da Silva-backed candidates would perform better in these states. For the Senate, the current Vice President, Hamilton Muraw, was elected, also contrary to opinion polls. The same thing happened with Bolsonaro’s former science minister, Marcos Pontes, who was given a seat in the Senate from São Paulo. All this data indicates that Lula was able to overtake Bolsonaro in the presidential elections, but the left was not able to stop the power of Bolsonaro. The right-wing conservative arc that opened up in 2016 and led to Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 remains strong in Brazil. This is, by all indications, one of the strengths of the election on Sunday, October 2nd. Bolsonaro’s strength may also be related to the disapproval of the Labor Party, which marked the 2018 elections so much.
It is in this context that Lula da Silva will have to organize his campaign for the second round. She supports the fact that she won the first round with an advantage of about 6 million votes. Additionally, in the history of Brazilian elections after the restoration of democracy, the winner in the first round has always won the second round as well. But Lula will have to face an opponent motivated by a better result than polls predicted, and with close allies able to muster their good electoral results to support him in the next four weeks.
Cerro Gomez’s anti-PT strategy ended up against him, as there appears to have been a beneficial vote by Cero’s supporters in Bolsonaro.
Lula da Silva will do everything in his power to ensure the votes of those betting on Simone Tebet (MDB) and Ciro Gomes (PDT), in third and fourth places respectively. In this sense, it will be important to see if the two candidates will formally declare their support for Labour. To persuade Tibet and Shiro to support him, Lula da Silva is expected to argue that this election is a clash between democracy and authoritarianism, and that by supporting him, they will both join the broad front in defense of the Brazilian democratic order. Tebet, in your Advertising After checking the results, he suggests that he will support Lula da Silva. In the case of Ciro Gomez, doubt insist – stick to his opinion. During the campaign, Ciro Gómez harshly criticized Lula da Silva and the PT, and in the 2018 elections he did not officially declare his support for Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the PT at the time. Cerro Gomez’s anti-PT strategy ended up against him, as there appears to have been a beneficial vote by Cero’s supporters in Bolsonaro. In Saturday’s poll by Datafolha, Ciro showed up with 5% and Bolsonaro with 36%. Election Day, the first was 3% and the second 43%.
To impress the voters of Ciro and Tebet, Lula da Silva is likely to point more towards the centre, referring, from now, to a part of the composition of his future government, i.e. the Minister of Economy or Finance, which should be a name nearby. of business. Many analysts point to the possibility that you are the former presidential candidate and former head of the Brazilian Central Bank, Henrik Meirelles. The religious vote, mostly Catholic, will be one area of contention between the candidates. Geographically, the two campaigns will mainly focus on São Paulo, the largest Brazilian electoral college.
Even if Lula da Silva confirms his victory in the second round of elections, the scenario for his third government will be very counterproductive. The Labor Party and its allies Failed to reach most of the seats In both the House of Representatives and the Senate. This will make it difficult to pass legislation in both houses. Faced with the opposite Congress, the specter of the president’s impeachment will also hover over Brazilian politics. During Bolsonaro’s government, the president was a target More than a hundred applications rejected On the initiative of the parliamentarians, but none of them came out of the stairs, because the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lera, was an ally of Bolsonaro.
Whatever the post-round two scenario, Brazil will remain a deeply divided country.
The third question that will determine the future of the Lula da Silva administration will be the fate of Bolsonaro himself. Without the immunity the position confers on him, Bolsonaro would be subject to several ongoing criminal proceedings. The fact that the Bolsonarismo is so powerful opens up the possibility of pardoning Bolsonaro, as a strategy for PT and its allies not to fan the bolsonarista rule and not to break bridges with future opponents in Congress. Lula da Silva will have a tough job ahead. His negotiating file indicates that a ruling is possible, but under very difficult circumstances.
If the second round gives Jair Bolsonaro the victory, the concern that Brazil may follow the path of illiberalism, a process similar to what is happening in Hungary, is growing. Studies indicate that In the second chapter thickens this path With police fraud, court domination and press suppression. If Bolsonaro is elected, he will be able, for example, to expand the composition of the Federal Supreme Court (STF), giving him the opportunity to appoint trusted judges to the court. The STF has, in the past four years, been one of the main forces against Bolsonaro.
Regardless of the post-round two scenario, Brazil will remain a deeply divided country, marked by political tension and severe governance difficulties.
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Daniel Cardoso He is Professor of International Relations at the Autonomous University of Lisbon, Deputy Director of the Observare Observatory of External Relations and a researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA).
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