Tag: Fernando Haddad

Capping off an electoral campaign marked by passionate anti-establishment sentiment, the jailing of a former president and rising political violence, Brazil took a collective leap of faith and elected right-wing nationalist strongman Jair Bolsonaro to a four-year term. The big picture: Throwing out the conciliatory political playbook that winning presidential candidates have used since the country’s 1985 transition from military rule, Bolsonaro won for a simple reason: He credibly promised to turn Brazilian politics upside down. Under a banner of radical right-wing reform that raised investors’ expectations, Bolsonaro’s insurgent candidacy became a social phenomenon. The 63-year-old former Army captain and longtime Congressman exploited popular social media platforms with fake news, thrived on misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric, promised a purge of the left and embodied a no-holds-barred approach to the country’s spiraling criminal violence. Though his Social Liberal party performed better than expected, winning 52 seats in the 513-member lower house of Congress, Bolsonaro will need a larger coalition to pass legislation. While Bolsonaro himself has equivocated about his position on old government pension programs, his market-friendly economics advisor has promised comprehensive pension reform. It remains to be seen where exactly the requisite votes will come from. Meanwhile, a proposal to privatize state electricity and energy companies has reportedly been shelved. Public security is the campaign issue on which Bolsonaro may feel he most needs to deliver immediate action. Why it matters: Brazil’s hard turn to the right opens the door to the military’s return to power as Bolsonaro sets the country on a new course for trade and foreign policy.

On the campaign trail, Bolsonaro has frequently drawn comparisons to U.S. President Donald Trump. Much of Brazil views the PT as corrupt. More worrying, perhaps, is that Brazil’s powerful military is backing Bolsonaro too. For military leaders, it appears to be a question of law and order. For decades, the armed forces largely avoided direct interference in or commentary about civilian politics. But support for democracy plummeted in Brazil to merely 13 percent last year. In an article I wrote this year for the Journal of Conflict Resolution, I showed that, between 1900 and 2015, former authoritarian elites in Latin America were four times more likely to return to positions of political or economic power under democracy than to be punished for their misdeeds. Brazil’s experience is more similar to Chile’s than to Argentina’s. After more than two decades in power, Brazil’s last military regime under João Figueiredo stepped down in 1985. For all of its power and influence, the military would far rather pull the strings of a Bolsonaro presidency than step in to rule directly.

But the story isn’t over. The Supreme Court will rule on whether he goes to prison while the Superior Electoral Court will rule on whether he can run for office. Will Lula be able to seek the presidency again? If Lula registers to run for office by the August 15 deadline, the Superior Electoral Court will review his case. It’s likely to rule his candidacy ineligible under the so-called "clean slate" law, meaning the Workers’ Party would have to find another candidate by Sept. 17. Is Lula going to jail? Could he really run for president from prison? While the Constitution prohibits inmates from running, prisoners who have not exhausted their appeals process can in theory run for office. To date no Brazilian president has successfully run for office from inside a prison cell. Aside from the possibility of Lula running for office from a jail cell, there’s also a chance that Lula could run for election, win, and then have his candidacy invalidated.