Bolsonaro goes to the UN in sequence of trips with calculated political risk

Jair Bolsonaro (PL) travels to New York to open the 77th UN General Assembly on Tuesday (20). The tight schedule, two weeks before the election, and the fact that he was in second place in the polls required, however, that the president’s team weigh more carefully the political risk of the scripts.

With the face of a campaign event, the trip to the USA will have caravans of supporters from American cities to welcome the president this Monday (19) and for a lunch still on Tuesday, after the speech at the UN.

In the midst of an electoral dispute far from being resolved, traveling abroad, mainly to two international destinations in a row – the president also went to London to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II – was not a simple calculation.

The government’s assessment, however, was that the trip was mandatory and that the political cost of missing would be greater than that of attending, reinforcing the image of isolation in the world’s political chess.

Not that presence guarantees integration into the global fabric. Bolsonaro has no bilateral meetings scheduled with any head of state of a country that is significant for the Brazilian economy and has so far confirmed meetings only with the presidents of Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso; from Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei; from Poland, Andrzej Duda; and from Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, all of whom are representatives of the global right. In addition, he is due to meet with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

But the trip to the US was decided based on a different reasoning than the one that took him to London, according to the president’s allies, who wanted above all a photo of Bolsonaro next to the new King Charles III. In the campaign’s assessment, being in the UK is a bigger nod to the common voter, on a pop theme such as British royalty that has widespread media coverage. The trip to New York is aimed more at opinion makers and international leaders, as well as ensuring prominence in the news.

With that in mind, Bolsonaro’s speech at the General Assembly must be permeated with nods to the international community without leaving aside his electoral base in Brazil. The president must speak of the food crisis catapulted by the Ukrainian War and repeat that Brazil is a “breadbasket of the world”, with the capacity to guarantee global food security – not to mention, of course, the crisis in the country itself, where hunger worsened since the pandemic and 33 million have nothing to eat, according to a recent study.

Still in relation to the war, Bolsonaro must use the crisis of natural gas shortages in Europe, which has led to an increase in coal burning, to criticize countries that have condemned his environmental policies – or the absence of them. He must reaffirm that Brazil has a clean energy matrix, in addition to taking advantage of the hook to promote a proposal from his electoral campaign, to promote wind energy in the Northeast.

Criticized by Western powers for not taking a stand against Russia, Bolsonaro must also talk about the reception of Ukrainian refugees in Brazil.

What should occupy much of his speech is also the economy, which serves both to attract investors and voters. Bolsonaro is expected to argue that Brazil has recovered better than other countries, highlighting higher-than-expected GDP growth and optimistic market projections.

As much as Brazilian diplomacy tries to prepare a more focused Bolsonaro, however, the final text read by the president is closed in the Planalto Palace, and there is fear that he will also use the UN pulpit to criticize other countries with leftist governments. . The president has insisted in recent events on criticizing not only Nicaragua’s dictatorship, but also democratic neighbors Chile and Argentina, in nods to their more radicalized base.

If it is well accepted, the speech should be used in the campaign, especially in short videos for social networks. As in previous years, the president’s allies already expect the entourage to be the target of political or environmental protests in New York.

Speaking for the fourth time at the UN, the Bolsonaro who arrives at the event in 2022 is different from previous years. In 2019, when there were great expectations about his debut, the president made an aggressive and unusual speech among Brazilian leaders. In 2020, he recorded a speech shown remotely in the Assembly due to the pandemic and defended himself from criticism for the lack of control of Covid in the country.

In 2021, the trip was marked by the president’s refusal to immunize himself against Covid-19 and doubts about the rules that prohibited unvaccinated people from participating in events indoors. The UN cleared it, but New York City did not — which resulted in images of Bolsonaro eating pizza on the sidewalk with ministers and in a tent set up outside a Brazilian steakhouse.

That was also Joe Biden’s first year as President of the United States, and there was some tension between the two, as the Brazilian openly supported Donald Trump’s re-election and repeated unfounded suspicions of fraud in the American election. At the time, the two leaders did not meet.

In 2022, Bolsonaro travels to New York with a more peaceful relationship with Biden. They meet for the first time in June, during the Summit of the Americas, although Washington has sent messages that it should not embark on a coup adventure if the Brazilian does not respect the result of the elections.