Everything indicates that Jair Bolsonaro will be defeated in the Brazilian presidential elections of 2022. It remains to be seen whether in the first or second round.
The president, however, is betting on desperate attempts to reverse this situation. Whether through extraordinary social spending or attempts to reduce fuel prices, carried out only in the last two months before the elections. Despite this, all these advances indicate that they will not come close to reversing this scenario, after all, Lula is the big favorite.
Without succeeding in his attacks with the help of the public machine, what he will be left with will be an attempted coup that he has been drawing since his first election as president. It remains to be seen, then, what will be the reaction of democratic Brazilians, in addition to “letters in defense of democracy” and saying that “this time, the president has crossed the line”. And how to fight bolsonarismo beyond Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro’s defeat will be a phenomenon. He will be the first president not to be elected for a second term, since that possibility came into being in 1998. And his defeat will occur in a context of the dismantling of democratic institutions, deepened by him since his election in 2018 – institutions that were already in place. under attack since the questioning of the electoral result and the rise of lavajatismo in 2014.
This is explained by the complete disaster of his government, surely the worst in Brazilian history. In short: increase in poverty, misery, hunger and unemployment; rising inflation and economic disorganization; attacks on minorities, intellectuals, artists, social activists; drastic reduction in spending on education and social investments in general; dismantling of the environmental protection network and increasing devastation and persecution of indigenous peoples; attacks on women’s reproductive rights; daily hate speech, facilitating the arming of its supporters and supporting the killings carried out by the police; finally, the disastrous management of the pandemic and direct responsibility for more than 600 thousand deaths resulting from Covid-19, which according to several entities, allows classifying it as a genocidal.
The government, it seems, was only a success for the hard core that continues to support his reelection: repressive sectors, generals in pajamas and the thousands of military personnel employed in the government, militia groups, the most devastating agribusiness, shooting clubs and the most fascist and reactionary sectors of Brazilian society. As can be seen, there are no more excuses for supporting Bolsonaro: those who support him have to assume their authoritarianism and support for violence.
Despair knocks at the door
With all this, a possible coup remains. If it happens, it will be a coup of a different nature, which Bolsonaro already tried unsuccessfully in September 2021, when he made direct attacks on democracy and claimed that he would only leave his office “imprisoned or dead”. He will try once more, first to generate violence and turmoil in order to postpone the elections. Defeated, he will allege fraud – he already openly and insistently claims that the electoral system is unreliable, even for an audience of foreign ambassadors.
Without being able to produce a successful “invasion of the Capitol” like that of US President Donald Trump in 2021, it will still have its last letters. He, the generals in pajamas and the so-called “centrão” have taken the institutions hostage, and they will still try coup exits through Congress.
Among the cards on the table: some general amnesty to avoid the arrest of Bolsonaro and his family in 2023; the creation of the term of senator for life for former presidents, guaranteeing parliamentary immunity to Bolsonaro; finally, semi-parliamentaryism or increased control of the budget by Congress (“budget tax”), to block the Lula government.
Of course, there still remains the unlikely hypothesis of the impeachment of Bolsonaro’s candidacy, for his daily attacks on democracy, for casting doubts on the electoral process, and abuse of power for his use of the Brazilian state to carry out an electoral campaign months before the elections, which is closed to all other candidates. It would be up to the Superior Electoral Court (daily attacked by Bolsonaro) to finally react. And everything indicates that Bolsonaro would rather have his candidacy impeached than lose the elections.
The endless disavowal notes
Faced with this whole picture of instability and violence predicted for the coming months, it is past time for all Democrats to mobilize effectively. It is past time for petitions, repudiation notes, manifestos and impeachment requests. We have already signed dozens of them. It is now up to democrats to have courage and day-to-day attention, permanent mobilization for the defense of what is left of democratic institutions.
In addition, we have to re-project a future for Brazil. This period of darkness will not last forever, and the union of all reasonable Brazilians will be necessary at this time of transition. The crisis of Brazilian democracy will not end with the electoral defeat of Bolsonaro, which is our immediate task. Bolsonarism will remain alive in society and institutions, as well as several factors that originated it.
The long-term task will be to rebuild the country and democratically generate an innovative and generous project for the future for Brazil. Less weapons and more schools and books will be a beautiful motto for this, among many others possible.
