Brazil election

Leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has won a runoff election to become the next president of Brazil, reassuming the job he last held 12 years ago after a bitter battle against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who is widely considered to be the ‘Trumpiest’ of the world’s elected right-wing politicians. Indeed, Bolsonaro has refused to accept defeat, even though most foreign governments and local political parties, including his allies, have begun congratulating Lula, whose imprisonment after a dubious corruption trial is largely responsible for opening the path to Bolsonaro taking the presidency. However, some of his aides claim the delay is only because Bolsonaro was so confident of victory that he had not prepared a concession speech. This is not unbelievable — no incumbent president has lost an election in Brazil since the restoration of democracy in 1985, which also serves to illustrate how polarising a figure Bolsonaro had become. But his refusal to concede could lead to further political and social unrest and create havoc in international markets, as Brazil is a key exporter of several commodities, especially foodstuff.

One side note is the renewed interest in what will become of Bolsonaro’s former justice minister Sergio Moro, the federal judge who oversaw Lula’s case and was accused of “bias” by top international legal experts and even Brazil’s top court when they overturned convictions and closed investigations into Lula and many of his allies. Moro allegedly shared information with prosecutors and indulged in other unethical acts to ensure Lula’s conviction and his party’s defeat in the 2018 elections. Moro was rewarded with a ministry within a year of Lula’s conviction, only to have a falling out with the strongman a few years later over his authoritarianism and awful management of Covid-19 — Brazil was among the worst-hit nations by the pandemic and still has the second highest death toll from the virus, yet Bolsonaro continued to downplay the virus, undermine health officials and offer quack cures to his citizens.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2022.

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