Has the Left left and is the Right right in Brazil?
Three weeks ago, 147 million Brazilians voted in the first round of the nation’s presidential elections. On Sunday, the second round of voting determined Brazil’s final choice between two radically different leaders, with the far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro’s beating the left-wing Workers’ Party candidate, Fernando Haddad. While this outcome may seem troubling to the outside world, it shows striking similarities to run up to the US elections in 2016.
Despite his controversial statements, Bolsonaro won the election with a sizeable lead of 55.1 per cent of the vote to Haddad’s 44.9 per cent. The motivation behind the wide support for Bolsonaro, who holds highly conservative values and has had no political experience, reflects just how frustrated Brazilians have become with the status quo. Past corruption scandals and unachieved promises by Haddad’s Workers’ Party, which arguably led Brazil into its worst recession ever, has left Brazil more polarized than it has ever been. Haddad had been struggling to prove his mettle despite representing a more open, progressive and democratic morale.
Reviewed by his opponents as racist, homophobic and sexist, Bolsonaro’s supporters, however, claim that he is ‘none of those things.’ Rather, he is a ‘victim of fake news’. They believe that he is ‘an honest man’, with no charges of corruption against him. Many believe that Bolsonaro, being a conservative and a family man, will bring back all the values Brazilians have lost in recent years. His promise to eliminate long-standing corruption, crime, and poverty in Brazil by changing the political landscape of the country has garnered popular support from the business community. Bolsonaro has shone in the eyes of Brazilians grappling with a corrupt political establishment, struggling economy and rising crime rates.
Having expressed his pro-torture views and favouring the use of military rule in solving deep societal problems, Bolsonaro plans on creating a cabinet that is nearly exclusively, wealthy, white, and male. His opinions on gender, immigration, LGBTQ and minority issues have been fiercely derogatory. He supports allowing the police to shoot first and question later and speaks fondly of Brazil’s time under its former military dictatorship. Threatening to follow US President Donald Trump and exit out of the Paris Agreement, Bolsonaro has also attracted criticism from the United Nations and the Environment Ministry in Brazil, while openly signalling his contempt for media and institutions that disapprove of him. Being home to the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, Brazil’s willingness to curb climate change is of the utmost importance globally.
In an interesting study conducted by the Friederich Ebert Foundation, sociologist Esther Solano surveyed 25 Bolsonaro supporters from diverse socio-economic backgrounds and age groups to evaluate the factors that led them to vote for such an extreme character. She found that people’s decision to vote for Bolsonaro was a sign of their frustration with the political mess in Brazil. With “Operation Car Wash” and the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff, Haddad’s candidacy signalled the continuation of the status quo. Support for Bolsonaro was thus a response to the crisis of representation as voting for an outsider seemed to be the more hopeful choice. She calls it the “phenomenon of conservative rebellion”, which is a reminder that while the marginalized communities may be promised new benefits, a large group of the conservative, middle-class and white communities may begin to feel left out and express their desire to go back to the past social order.
Solano’s study and her interview with the Brazilian Report draw important inferences about the society in Brazil that is “grappling with a strong racist, conservative and unequal matrix”. Historically, Brazil was built on economic, social, cultural and racial inequality through the influence of powerful elites, genocides of black and indigenous peoples, and systemic patriarchy. Brazilian society reflects this dichotomy, with a strong cognitive, political, cultural and emotional inability to accept change and adapt to a complex and dynamic world. Bolsonaro has tapped into this difficulty by reminding the people of their connection to traditional values. Bolsonaro’s supporters are well educated and he has fared very well among University students, which is reflective of the highly stratified nature of post-secondary institutions across Latin America that suffer from a lack of critical engagement with civil and political issues.
Despite differing histories and cultures, Brazil’s recent election closely resembles the 2016 US electoral campaign in the United States, indicating that the future of Brazilian democracy may also be at a crossroads. Through his victory on Sunday, Bolsonaro has incited many Brazilians, reminding them of a past that they could revive, potentially sprouting more radical Bolsonaros in the future. While the rest of the world progresses towards more robust economic policies, strong climate change resolutions, and inclusive societies, Brazil’s choice of leadership raises many concerns not only for the future of Brazil, but also the future of Latin America and the rest of the world.