The narrow but unprecedented victory won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over incumbent far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil’s presidential run-off election on 30 October, prompted a wave of congratulations from the leaders of the imperialist states as they fretted at the country’s deepening political crisis and the enormous damage done to the Amazon by Bolsonaro’s regime.
The congratulations of western leaders coincided with the huge morale boost to the poorest in Brazil, but the two responses rest on completely different material interests. The needs of the working class in Brazil are of no direct concern to the North American and European investors and traders with the country. Political ‘stability’ for the extraction and realisation of profits, interest and rents is their key requirement. The strategic role of Latin America demands the absence of ‘disturbances’ to private economic interests. Permeating this concern is the fact that 20% of the Amazon is no longer a net carbon absorber.
US imperialism is adjusting its approach to Latin America as it shifts actively to oppose Chinese accumulation. It wants to pull Brazil further into ‘global supply chains’, link the role of food supplies from Brazil into US foreign policy, and import manufactured products like pharmaceuticals and electronics from Brazil instead of China.
However, a November open letter by progressive Latin American leaders calling for the relaunch of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), and for Venezuela to be invited to join, argues that ‘the escalation of the dispute between China and the US has created a new international scenario’ calling for a coordinated response to the threat of global chaos and the use of nuclear weapons. Brazil’s role in such a union, and so Lula’s, will be vital.
The right-wing resurgence
Lula previously held the presidency from 2003 to 2010. After 2014, with the fall in capital accumulation rates, the bourgeoisie decided to cripple his Workers Party (PT), and in April 2016 engineered impeachment charges against his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Lula was then also removed from the 2018 election campaign with fictitious criminal charges, leaving the field clear for Bolsonaro to win. Bolsonaro fostered the extreme right, hate speech, political violence and murders, glorified and extended gun ownership and the status of the military, and left Covid-19 to wreak unconstrained disaster among the urban poor.
In April 2021 the last of all 26 false charges of corruption and money laundering made against Lula were dismissed. For some of these charges he had been imprisoned for 580 days in 2018 and 2019. He now stood again for election.
The first round
In October’s general election, Brazilians elected all 513 lower house representatives and 27 of the 81 members in the upper chamber, as well as the president, vice president and governors. A new law allows parties to form Alliances which act as a single party, nominating candidates for all offices, and retain a single leadership structure over the course of the elected legislature.
Bolsonaro tried to bribe voters with public money: in July he and his Congress allies provided 1,000 reais (US$192.38) in aid for self-employed truckers, a key Bolsonaro constituency. He forced down the price of fuel. Just before the election, he circumvented electoral law by declaring a state of emergency in order to increase the Auxilio Brazil, a benefit paid to 21.1 million poor (which re-branded Lula’s 2003 Bolsa Familia), by 50%; increased the cooking gas voucher; and threw in aid to taxi drivers. The cost of the whole proposal was around 40 billion reais (some US$7.6bn). Almost half of the beneficiaries were in the Northeast, where he failed to gain votes in the last presidential elections. On top of this, a ‘secret’ budget fund, about one fifth of the entire discretionary part of the budget, was used to give money to 198 far-right or centre-right party deputies, to create Bolsonaro’s ‘Alliance for Brazil’.
In the first round on 2 October, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) won 99 lower house seats (an increase of 66). With his allies, the Progressistas (47) and the Republicans (41), they easily outvote Lula’s Alliance (98) on its own. The PL gained 13 seats in the Senate (an increase of 11), more than any single party in both chambers. Bolsonaro’s Alliance also controls 14 state governments. He sustains important positions of strength (in the Army, in the police and in state governments), with a solid social media base. In sum the so called ‘Centrao’, a dominant group of wealthy conservatives, won 229 seats, Lula’s coalition 139, strongly right-wing parties 85, and so-called moderates, who usually run with the ‘Centrao’, 60. Lula is already placed in a position that severely restricts his initiatives despite subsequently winning the final presidential vote.
The run-off
After the first round, the country was plagued by an unprecedented social media disinformation campaign. Bolsonaro set up a huge fake news machine, using evangelical churches as trumpets in his orchestra of lies. He had almost 60 million social media followers (against 25 million for Lula) across various platforms (CNN Brazil survey). On the ground, obstruction of voting stations by federal police took place in regions where the PT has the most votes, such as the Northeast. Electoral harassment of employees by pro-Bolsonaro employers was common. The Ministry of Labour recorded more than 2,400 complaints of harassment and other attempts to manipulate the popular vote.
US President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat certainly sapped support for Bolsonaro. US and European imperialism indicated directly to the Brazilian armed forces that they would not accept any coup adventure. The widespread truck drivers’ protests, organised by Bolsonaro’s cronies after the election results were announced, ebbed away in three days, as Bolsonaro, anxious about potential criminal charges against him, conceded a transition.
Lula’s final election victory was by a narrow margin (50.9% versus 49.1%), 2,139,645 valid votes out of 118,552,353. It was his largest absolute personal vote ever, a severe blow to the backers of the six-year criminal campaign against him. Yet his Congress and Senate position is, as it was in the past, in the hands of his opponents, and he must rely, as he did in prison, upon the intensified militancy of the progressive working class to achieve his promises.
Alvaro Michaels
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 291 December 2022/January 2023
