What Happens in Brazil Won’t Stay in Brazil: The 2022 Brazilian Elections

A global election

Brazil’s election is globally significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, Brazil is the second largest democracy in the western hemisphere and a regional leader in South America. It has a vibrant civil society and lively democratic culture, but democratic backsliding and political polarisation in recent years have raised concerns in many quarters (not least among academics, media, non-governmental organisations and foreign investors). The breakdown of democracy would have worrying implications for the rest of the region.

Brazil has more than 156 million registered voters. All citizens above the age of 16 are eligible to vote, with it being compulsory for 18 to 70-year-olds. This ensures turnouts of around 80 per cent, but also raises the possibility of large numbers of blank or spoiled ballots. The electoral system requires a second round of voting (scheduled for 30 October in 2022), if no presidential candidate gets more than half of the valid vote in the first round. The question is will Brazil buck the trend or follow in the footsteps of other recent electoral victories for the centre-left in Latin America, like in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Colombia among others.

Secondly, global concerns with food and energy security in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war means that Brazil plays an increasingly important role in the global supply of these precious commodities. Brazil’s agribusiness sector is one of the most competitive and productive producers of agricultural goods. It is the largest net exporter of food in the world, and the significance of its harvests on world food supply and agricultural commodity prices cannot be ignored. The agribusiness sector has been one of Bolsonaro’s closest allies, although it had also worked well with the Lula government during his presidency (2003-2010) at the height of the commodity boom and the Doha Round negotiations at the World Trade Organization.

Brazil’s election is globally significant. Brazil is the second largest democracy in the western hemisphere and a regional leader in South America.

Thirdly, arguably the most important reason for global attention on the Brazilian elections, is that Brazil houses the bulk of the territory of the Amazon rainforest. It is a key regional and global carbon sink, central to achieving the UN’s climate targets. On 22 July 2022, dubbed ‘climate emergency day’, the Climate Clock counted down to only seven years before the planet loses the chance to keep below the 1.5C temperature rise target set by the United Nations. President Bolsonaro’s dismissive attitude towards environmental and climate change issues has already seen increasing levels of deforestation, with signs already emerging of highly detrimental knock-on effects on regional weather patterns and global climate change. He has pushed for further economic development in the Amazon region (mainly agriculture and extractive industries), loosened environmental licensing regulations, undermined and defunded federal environmental protection agencies, and ignored the human rights of indigenous peoples of the Amazon. Confrontations between local inhabitants and environmental activists in the Amazon, and organised crime groups involved in illegal deforestation, poaching, illegal fishing and drug trafficking came into the global spotlight with the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian expert on indigenous people Bruno Pereira in the Javari Valley in June this year. Both illegal and legal activities are such that many environmental and climate activists fear that Brazil (and the world) could not sustain another four-year term with Bolsonaro in office.

Finally, for many decades, Brazilian diplomacy and foreign policy played a key role in constructively engaging with multilateralism, working to build bridges and consensus in various UN agencies, and taking a lead in global governance forums on many issues of interest to the Global South. Bolsonaro’s first term already saw reduced engagement and even reversals of Brazilian positions, especially in areas of human rights and environmental protection. Earlier this year, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, expressed her concerns about structural racism, increasing police violence, disrespect for human rights and the rule of law in Brazil. Should Bolsonaro be re-elected, we could see an entrenching of these patterns. One would expect further damage to Brazil’s reputation abroad: a more nationalistic and parochial mindset would ossify so that a key past protagonist of multilateralism would remain missing in action at a vulnerable moment for the Western-led international liberal order.

Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Next, let us consider some of the main political developments in Brazil in the run up to October’s elections. After years of economic stagnation and the ravages of the COVID pandemic, demands for change have grown. Brazil suffered the second highest numbers of COVID-related deaths (676,000 by mid-July 2022). Bolsonaro’s anti-science and anti-vaccine positions contributed to his poor handling of the pandemic. However, although the time is ripe for a fresh policy approach, all signs point to an electoral campaign that is backward looking with a focus on the past performance of the two front-runner candidates. It has been disappointingly sparse on creative or innovative policy proposals that are urgently needed to kick-start Brazil’s post-pandemic recovery in a more sustainable and inclusive way.

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Whereas Lula emphasises his positive past economic and social policy record during his two terms in office, Bolsonaro has found this more difficult. Voters are mainly concerned with the return of double-digit inflation and poor job prospects. This forced Bolsonaro to scramble together a last-minute rise in ‘Auxilio Brasil’, a cash transfer programme originally designed for poor families during the pandemic. Thus, in July, his government pushed through a constitutional amendment that allowed it to increase social spending by some 41.3 billion reals (about 7.6 billion US dollars), doubling the monthly cash transfer to the poor as well as providing fuel subsidies to key groups like truckers and taxi drivers.

Bolsonaro knows he needs support from Brazil’s many poor voters to win. They had remained loyal to the PT in the 2018 elections, partly because of their fond memories of the income and consumption boost in the Lula years, something that should favour Lula and the PT again. Interestingly, the new government spending had an almost immediate impact on voting intentions: PoderData’s polls in July indicated increased support for Bolsonaro from 28 to 37 per cent among Auxilio Brasil’s recipients. Although the swing in voter intentions could be exhausted already, it could bring enough extra votes in his favour to ensure a second-round run-off on 30 October. Effectively, this would buy Bolsonaro time after the first round.

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro focuses on the PT’s past corruption scandals (mainly the infamous ‘Operation Car Wash’), hoping to deflect voters from the various (albeit smaller scale) corruption scandals involving his own ministers and sons. He hopes to retain the support of many middle-class voters, who were key to his electoral win in 2018, by reminding them of their disgust and distrust of the PT’s past behaviour in the presidency. However, he has not always been successful in this, with increasing numbers of voters showing scepticism about his anti-corruption credentials, not to mention his limited support among women voters who dislike his misogynistic behaviour and comments (only 32 per cent of women support him compared to Lula’s 47 per cent according to July polling data).

The President has repeatedly clashed with the Supreme Court, including individual judges. There is method to this madness as clashes with the judiciary not only undermine its reputation, but also helps him to rally his hard-line supporters, identify which political parties are with or against him, and fans military fears about public disorder and unrest. The military have played an unprecedented role in his government, filling some 6,000 patronage appointments, including more Cabinet ministers than during the military dictatorship (1964-1985). Although Bolsonaro has hinted at another military general, Walter Souza Braga Netto, for his running mate in 2022, so far, all indications are that the military has little appetite for direct intervention in political or electoral matters. Of course, this could change if there is severe post-election street violence and societal disruption.

The prospects for political violence are greater, given the sharp rise in both political polarisation and firearms registrations (up some 226 per cent in three-year periods between 2016-2018 and 2019-2021). The confrontational attitude of the President and his supporters towards the judicial system, mainstream media, universities, and social and environmental activists, alongside his active courting of the armed forces and police has rattled those who had faith in the consolidation of Brazilian democracy under the 1988 Constitution. Their fears are not without justification, but there are still many reasons to believe in the solidity of Brazilian democratic institutions, not least because of the way they have stood up to Bolsonaro’s attacks in the past three and a half years.

Trump playbook

Apparently, taking a leaf from the Trump playbook, the President has repeatedly cast doubt on the integrity of the voting process and electoral courts, as well as the impartiality of the Supreme Court. He seems to be setting the narrative to feed into a 6 January-style confrontation. Rather astonishingly, he called a meeting of foreign ambassadors in Brasilia on 18 July 2022, where he informed them that efforts were underway to block his re-election through fraud, and that military involvement might be necessary to ensure the integrity of the elections. Immediately after the meeting, the Supreme Electoral Court issued a 20-point fact check debunking the claims of Bolsonaro. On 21 July, the British Embassy felt it necessary to note that Brazil had ‘solid and transparent institutions’ and its electoral system and voting has been secure, and known for ‘its speed and efficiency’ as well as commitment to ‘respecting democracy through free and fair elections’. Similarly, the US Embassy praised Brazil’s electoral institutions, noting it served as ‘a model’ for other countries.

Brazilian media and scholars have warned that Bolsonaro’s years of social media disseminated fake news and disinformation have set the stage for him to claim fraud should he not win re-election in October. More troubling has been the silence of the national business community, who have said little to criticise or support the President. It is in this context that Lula’s choice of running mate for Vice-President makes sense. Geraldo Alckmin, ex-governor of Sao Paulo, with close contacts to key business leaders and associations, does not bring many votes with him, but he could become a significant player in winning over the support of economic elites should there be a post-election confrontation. It also replicates Lula’s successful strategy in the 2002 elections, when he invited a well-known businessman to run on his ticket as a signal to reassure the business community. It is worth noting that no Brazilian president has ever managed to govern without at least the passive support of business.

Brazil’s future

In analytical terms, the Brazilian situation is a classic case of how institutions and actors might pull in different directions to shape outcomes. Brazil, under Bolsonaro’s brand of right-wing populism, has been witness to the struggle between relatively strong democratic institutions and the democracy-undermining actions of key individuals and groups. Democratic backsliding occurs precisely where and when elected leaders attack democratic institutions from within. Their main targets are judicial independence, autonomy of electoral authorities and freedoms of the traditional press. Their incremental attacks on democratic institutions normalise the abuse of power and overturn the normal checks and balances of the constitutional order. Worryingly, these are all features of Bolsonaro’s strategy and actions.

At the time of writing, in mid-July, only Lula and the third-placed candidate in opinion polls, Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT), had officially confirmed their presidential candidacies. But with Lula and Bolsonaro together hogging almost 90 per of voting intentions, the vote itself is likely to be a two-horse race. The world will be watching what happens on 2 October. The outcome of Brazil’s elections will have significant implications for regional stability as well as global achievement of sustainable development, carbon neutrality and climate change goals.