NEWS CENTER – An important victory to be celebrated without doubt, President (ex as of January 1st, 2023) Jair Bolsonaro lost the presidential election this Sunday (30) in Brazil. Despite polls showing a gap of at least 3% between leftist candidate Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and Bolsonaro, the close result of 51/49% came true and that says a lot about the situation the country is in.
In four years of Bolsonaro’s administration, Brazil has seen its economy shrink; the deforestation of the Amazon has increased to levels never seen before; the terrible management of the pandemic left more than 600,000 dead and to this day Bolsonaro and his radical line claim to have been a good answer and preach against the vaccine; the deaths caused by police have increased exponentially; fascist attacks against minorities and people of the left have occurred sporadically – especially during this electoral period, etc.
It is clear that a radicalization of the Bolsonarist base has been confirmed, the same base that started to arm itself with the flexibilization imposed by the government, which increased the number of people who have a gun? weapons that were used against the left on at least 5 occasions, which drew the attention of the media. The most absurd and unbelievable was the case of former Congressman Roberto Jefferson on October 24th who shot at federal police officers with rifle and grenade fire…what draws attention in the case was the manner in which the situation was handled, where a video on the Internet shows a federal police officer with Jefferson talking and laughing with him while they talk about what happened hours after a policewoman was injured by the shots.
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Bolsonarist strength has not diminished
The elections also took place to elect new state deputies, federal deputies, senators and governors in the country and what is clear from the results is that the fascist ideology that Bolsonaro defends and his motto “God, Homeland and Family” remains strong and expressive. Bolsonaro’s fascist party, the Liberal Party (PL), managed to elect the largest parties in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. In total, 99 federal deputies were elected, an increase of 23 in relation to the current legislature. In the Senate, eight senators were elected, adding 13 congressmen in the House. With this, the LP managed to total 112 congressmen in the National Congress.
In its wake, the parties of the left elected 138 congressmen. The federation Brasil da Esperança, formed by a coalition of five parties, elected 79 congressmen, an increase of three congressmen.
This shows that even ‘politically isolated’ Bolsonaro’s discourse and praxis continues to attract large portions of the Brazilian population and to elect to parliament people as vile and immoral as Bolsonaro himself. These people, even before the beginning of their mandate, are already talking about impeaching Lula, since they have a considerable number of congressmen.
Divided society and the broken system
A result of 51/49% is alarming for the Brazilian left (58,206,354 votes for Bolsonaro), even considering the new conjuncture where neighboring countries are also going through similar processes and social-democratic governments, the moment is critical and crucial. In order not to repeat what happened in the 2010’s where after a decade of left-wing governments in the Continent (in what became known as Marea Rosa), the institutions of the financial capitalist system and through the ‘indirect’ intervention of foreign interests, veiled coups occurred throughout the Continent and a cycle of right-wing and extreme-right governments came to rule between 2013 and 2020. In this period inequality increased, hunger, violence and pandemics only contributed to this scenario…
Under liberal and fascist governments, especially in South America, the rapprochement with the US and its policies only deepened the already significant inequalities in the region. For this reason, since 2020 a new wave of social democratic governments has been elected in different countries, including Colombia – the first time a leftist president has been elected in the country. However, what has been proven is that society’s aspirations for equality are not satisfied with the crumbs offered by Social Democracy…as is more than clear with Boric in Chile and Alberto Fernández in Argentina.
Lula moved even further away from the bases of the left which had started his political career in the 80’s and is linked with right-wing parties, businessmen of the national bourgeoisie, former political enemies, etc… even so, he will have to deal with an extremely divided congress. where Bolsonarism is strong, in addition to the fascist popular bases that have been exponentially organized and radicalized, there is still the serious problem of the infiltration of Bolsonarista supporters in the police and military institutions of the state – which presents a great risk of democratic rupture in a short period of time. time.
