President with hope for a democratic revival

Helder Ferreira do Vale

The author is a professor at Federal University of Bahia’s (UFBA) Graduate Program in International Relation, Brazil.

On Oct. 30, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) won the second round of the Brazilian presidential elections. The president-elect achieved his victory with 50.8 percent of the votes. He defeated by only a small difference Jair Bolsonaro the current Brazilian far right president who ran for reelection and obtained 49.1 percent of the votes. Lula’s return to power ten years after his previous governments (2003-2011) halts Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic agenda.

Lula’s triumph is due to the formation of a broad political front built during the election campaign to reverse policies of Bolsonaro’s far-right government. The 60 million Brazilians that elected Lula hope that Brazil will be re-democratized with the end of Bolsonaro’s effort to erode Brazilian democracy.

The election of Lula as president for the third time marks a new moment of his long political career which began as a trade union leader in the early 1980s. In 2003 he was the first leftist leader to take over as Brazil’s president. After two terms in power, his government ended in 2011 with the highest evaluation rate of any democratic government in Brazil.

Despite Lula’s many achievements as president, in 2016 he was indicted for corruption and sentenced in 2017 to twelve years in prison. Once imprisoned after a controversial trial in 2018, his sentence was annulled by the Supreme Court. The corruption crisis involving Lula and his party favored the rise of Bolsonaro to power as a far-right leader.

Since Bolsonaro became president in 2018, he immersed Brazil in a permanent democratic crisis. In this year’s elections, Bolsonaro used the state politically to influence the electoral process. In recent months, the ministry of economy increased social benefits, granted special credit for the beneficiaries of social assistance, and decreased taxes to reduce the price of gasoline and electricity. In addition to electoral abuses, Bolsonaro attacked democratic institutions to generate public mistrust in the elections in case he wouldn’t win it. Bolsonaro until now has not directly conceded to Lula.

Lula’s government will find strong opposition in the national congress. The parties forming the pro-Lula alliance in the senate and the lower house are insufficient to pass laws. Lula will have to negotiate with the pragmatic parties representing the center of the ideological political spectrum that often trade their congressional support in exchange for political benefits (e.g., political appointments in ministries).

Unlike other Latin American countries that have turned to the left initiating a “pink tide” in the region, there are doubts whether Lula has political strength to implement progressive policies. Lula won the elections with a narrow margin of 2 million votes revealing a deeply divided country. In Lula’s victory speech the focus was on the urgent need to reconcile the country: “There aren’t two ‘Brazils.’ It’s time to lay down our arms.”

Most of Lula’s votes came from women, the poor, and Catholics. The poorest voters, those who earn up to two minimum wages (45 percent of the Brazilian electorate), revealed their support for Lula, who received 61 percent of their vote intention, compared to 33 percent support for Bolsonaro. Also, Lula showed a great ability to attract the female voters (53 percent of the electorate). Around 52 percent of them declared vote for Lula and 41 percent of them intended to vote for Bolsonaro.

The fight against hunger is urgent in a country where there is an increase in child malnutrition and 33 million Brazilians are food insecure. Lula’s popularity among poor Brazilians comes from his policies to combat poverty and hunger such as the creation of the cash-transfer program, Bolsa Família, which lifted over 40 million Brazilians out of poverty. There are expectations that Lula will once again innovate in his social policies, contrasting with Bolsonaro’s lack of policies to alleviate hunger.

Regarding the environment, Lula has a strong commitment to environmental preservation. One of his campaign promises is to create a ministry to deal with the interests of indigenous peoples. Lula also guaranteed the reactivation of existing institutions and legislation to combat environmental destruction. Currently, Brazil has one of its highest deforestation rates in decades and a significant increase in land conflicts culminating in record killings of environmentalists and indigenous people.

Brazil’s foreign policy will undergo a radical change as Lula will vigorously participate in global debates. Furthermore, Lula will bring Brazil closer to its Latin American neighbors, increase the weight of Brazil in the reform of international organizations, actively participate in the BRICS’ initiatives, and create cooperation mechanisms between Brazil and developing countries.

After the last four years of democratic setbacks, politics must give way to solutions to the real-life problems that afflict most Brazilians. It is uncontestable Lula’s commitment to transform Brazil’s harsh social reality and to appease the followers of Bolsonaro’s ultraright movement. But now this task seems very difficult.