Bolsonaro supporters have struggled to process the election results. Photo courtesy of The Washington Post.
*This article was originally published on Medium by Gregoire Winston.
*Disclaimer: language pertaining to sexual assault
On Brazil’s national flag, the country’s tricolor motto reads “Ordem e Progresso,” Portuguese for “order and progress.” Over the course of his four-year term, former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro impressively defied all odds, surpassing expectations placed on him by both his most loyal supporters and fervent critics. How? Through achieving neither order nor progress in South America’s largest and most populous country.
However, on Oct. 30, 2022, international leaders came together in acknowledging a turning point of Brazil’s global magnitude, an impact that will undoubtedly alter both Brazil’s political landscape and global geopolitics as a whole. Bolsonaro fell at the ballot box, succumbing to defeat at the hands of democratic candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — known mononymously as Lula — by the slimmest of margins: 49.11% for the loser and 50.89% for the victor. Acknowledgements of the election results came thick and fast; President Biden expressed his “congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the next president of Brazil following free, fair, and credible elections” via an official White House statement hours after results became official. French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his belief on Twitter that Lula’s election will begin “a new chapter in the history of Brazil. Together, we will join forces to face the many common challenges and renew the bond of friendship between our two countries.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined in as well, exclaiming on his Twitter account that “the people of Brazil has spoken!”.
Although Lula’s victory marks a new era of democracy on the South American continent, discord is rampant at the core of Brazil’s political process; Brazilians stand divided over whether the election results were truly fair. Thirty-six hours after Lula’s presidential officialization, Bolsonaro’s silence towards acknowledging defeat spoke volumes to his supporters. For months on end, the incumbent president pushed a rhetoric centered around a loss of faith in the Brazilian election process;
Al Jazeera
has him on record claiming that “there are only three alternatives: to win, to be arrested or to be killed.” Now fallen from power, what awaits Brazil’s democracy, whose domestic turmoil seems to be barrelling it towards a cliff? The answer may lie in America’s recent political history.
In the wake of President Biden’s triumph during the 2020 U.S. election, Donald Trump’s repeated cries for help via an anti-democracy campaign grounded around bogus claims of election fraud witnessed a meek number of international leaders plead to his defense. That is, all but one in particular; unsurprisingly, this leader was Jair Bolsonaro. Dubbed “the Trump of the tropics” due to the parallel political philosophies they share, both heads of state tied close-knit political, social and economic relations during their times in office, an unprecedented foreign policy improvement given the Brazilian rampant anti-American sentiments from the decades prior. Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of
Americas Quarterly
, has commented on their relationship, stating that “there is no leader in the world that has tried harder in copying the Donald Trump model, in terms of substance and style, than Bolsonaro.” Trump’s incessant tendency to break the socially acceptable barriers of political correctness are reflected in Bolsonaro’s expression of his ideals. In 2005, Trump made a series of sexist comments regarding women, claiming that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. Grab ’em by the p*ssy. You can do anything”; this coincidentally aligns with the words Bolsonaro had for a female lawmaker in 2014: “I would not rape you because you are not worthy of it.” Moreover, the outgoing Brazilian president claimed in an interview with Playboy that “I would rather my son die in a car accident than be gay,” while
The New York Times
found that Trump painted LGBTQ members as domestic terrorists and extremists in response to the 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting. From a socioeconomic lens, both leaders’ unrelenting love for their country have time and again prioritized national lucrative interests over environmental protection. Trump’s reputation as a “climate denier,” showcased by the 2019 U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords in favor of increased coal mining jobs in the Midwest, according to
BBC News
, placed patriotism over conservation. Similarly, Bolsonaro accelerated Amazonian deforestation to historic rates, according to
Vox
, with as many as 1,000 fires being reported a day; rural farmers have taken advantage of lax environmental regulation and a disdain for respecting indigenous lands to expand Brazil’s national agribusiness industry.
Most importantly, both leaders’ extremist, ultranationalist perspectives feed directly into ways in which they accept electorate defeat — or rather, a lack thereof. In an attempt to protect their fragile egos from the thought of political failure, Trump and Bolsonaro have counted on baseless “election rigging” pleas via fear-mongering, consequently convincing their respective supporters of nonexistent acts of voter fraud. Undermining a foundational aspect of democracy and repeatedly putting into question a system which has fairly served each country’s history is inherently dangerous for the future of democracies worldwide. If two global hegemons, viewed as prime examples of democratic success stories, are asking questions of their electorate processes’ legitimacy, why would any other democratic institutions not be willing to ask themselves these very concerns? The number of democracies has been trending downwards worldwide, and so the international community must prevent the alarming realities witnessed in the U.S. and Brazil from becoming a recurring 21st century norm.
For now, Lula has fairly won Brazil’s 2022 presidential election, yet only time will tell whether Bolsonaro formally concedes power and steps down from office. In his most recent public speech, less than 48 hours after the election, Bolsonaro never explicitly stated he was conceding power, although a close source did confirm his authorization for a soon-to-come transition of power. Regardless of his decision-making, knowing that pro-Bolsonaro partisans are willing to burn the pillars of their nation to the ground on the basis of a flimsy conspiracy theory is a scary sight to see. South America’s geopolitical future is in jeopardy; if future Bolsonaro-like politicians become elected officials years down the line, Brazil’s foundational principles as a democratic state could be a memory of the past.