President Bolsonaro’s disastrous mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, with 612,000 deaths and over 22 million cases, has likely condemned him to defeat in the 2022 elections. On 26 October, a Brazilian Senate commission recommended criminal charges be brought against him, including crimes against humanity, for his Covid-19 policies.
The commission also called for the indictment of 77 other people, including several ministers and three of Bolsonaro’s children. Bolsonaro is an outcast among world leaders. He held no ‘side discussions’ with any head of government during the G20 Summit in Rome, and personally ignored the COP26 Conference in Glasgow. The Brazilian right wing has no current viable challenger to confront former President Lula Da Silva next October.
Judge Sergio Moro, whom the Supreme Court ruled to be biased for condemning Lula to prison in 2018, and who then became Justice Minister under Bolsonaro, claimed he was ‘ready’ to challenge both Bolsonaro and Lula in the 2022 elections. Seeking to clean up his image, Moro has adopted the Podemos party to do this. He claims a ‘third way’ amid the ‘polarisation’ between Bolsonaro and Lula, but his appeal will only be to Bolsonaro’s constituency. Polls currently show Moro has 8% of the voting intentions, behind Lula’s 48% and Bolsonaro’s 21%. Lula has not yet declared his candidacy for the presidency and neither has Bolsonaro.
On 28 October, Lula saw his 20th judicial victory, after yet another ‘lawfare’ case against him was dismissed due to lack of evidence. The French government warmly received Lula on his visit to France. He has been given the Political Courage 2021 award by the French magazine Politique Internationale, for lifting 30 million Brazilians out of poverty between 2003 and 2011. Notably, the magazine highlighted Lula’s resistance to ‘political and judicial persecution’, which helped force the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court to revoke his sentences.
A shaky economy
Despite its size and development, Brazil is held captive by the imperialist powers through debts and trade traps. The innumerable and extensive ‘services’ that imperialism has loaded onto Brazil, specifically the profits, interest and dividends on direct, portfolio and other investments, amounting to $38.2bn in 2020, drains away its trading income surplus from raw material and agricultural exports. This restricts economic growth. Official unemployment rose from 6.75% to 15% in 2021 and inflation has re-emerged at 10.67% annually. This year the price of refined sugar has risen by 48% and cooking gas 38%, hitting the poor hard. Since the start of 2020, the Brazilian real has shed a quarter of its value against the dollar, pushing up import prices, and forcing more work out of the masses to maintain their daily diet. In October, Bolsonaro pledged to pay R$400 (US$71) a month to his favoured constituency, self-employed truck drivers, to make up for increased fuel prices.
The worst drought in almost a century, a direct result of the destruction of forests by an ignorant and vicious ruling class, has hit hydroelectricity generation and led to the use of more expensive thermal plants. Amazonian forest destruction has accelerated under Bolsonaro, who supports every type of incursion into and reduction of forests, forcing the indigenous communities to create self-defence patrols. In return more violence is directed at them. An estimated 20,000 illegal miners, the vanguard of big mining companies, are working within the Yanomami Indigenous Territory alone.
The 2003 Bolsa Familia scheme, created by Lula’s government for the poorest citizens, was ended on 17 November. In its place an electorally motivated scheme called Brazil Aid increases the monthly sum for each beneficiary to an average of 224 reals ($40), up from 190 reals, and increases the number of recipients. However, the new benefits are touted to reach 17 million families by December, less than half those who received the previous emergency pandemic payments, which ended in October. The remaining poor must look to themselves as best they can.
Almost a year must pass before the October 2022 elections. The chronic economic and social crisis in Brazil deepens. Only the sweeping away of the current regime will provide a future for the broad masses of people.
Alvaro Michaels
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 285, December 2021/January 2022
