A day after Chile elected the leftist Gabriel Boric, Jair Bolsonaro (PL) still hadn’t congratulated him for the victory until 6pm this Monday (20th). Allies of the president, in turn, lamented the result on social media.
Among the main leaders of South America, only Bolsonaro had not spoken. Since last Friday (17), he has been in Guarujá (SP).
The president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benitez, for example, congratulated Boric and said that the countries will work together to continue strengthening relations between the countries.
Alberto Fernandez, from Argentina, said: “We must commit to strengthening the bonds of brotherhood that unite our countries, and work together in the region to end inequality in Latin America.”
Privately, ambassadors reported discomfort with Brazil’s delay in manifesting itself. The process must come from the president, on behalf of the government, and then the Itamaraty also usually releases a note.
By the time Fernández was elected in Argentina in 2019, Bolsonaro not only failed to congratulate him but also regretted his victory. The Argentine leader is close to former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
Leader of the 2011 student protests, Boric was elected on Sunday (19) after defeating far-right José Antonio Kast. It won by 55.8% against 44.1%.
With 4.6 million voters, the Frente Amplio candidate became the most voted in Chilean history. Voting is not mandatory in the country, but more than half of the population attended the polls (55.65%).
Even so, allies of President Bolsonaro highlighted the high abstention and were related to the dispute in 2022 in Brazil.
“Beating your chest saying you didn’t vote for any politician will only make history [no Brasil] repeat itself,” said Eduardo Bolsonaro (PSL-SP), federal deputy and son of the president.
“If we don’t understand the strategy of the left, we will end up being governed by one of them.”
The councilor of Rio de Janeiro and the president’s son, Carlos Bolsonaro, said that “meanwhile in Brazil”, the possible vote in the “third way”, which he called “LULO”, is growing, implying that it can benefit Lula.
The tone in the pocket-sized networks, which raised the hashtag #JairOuJáEra, was one of alarmism with the Chilean election. Former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles said: “Chile has fallen.”
The Minister for Women, Family and Human Rights, Damares Alvesa, published a map of South America on Twitter with the communist symbol of the hammer and sickle.
“As there are still people who didn’t understand, they asked me to draw! I’m not talking about Bolsonaro, it’s about hope, it’s about democracy! Yes, the most important election in the world in the year 2022 will take place in Brazil!”, he said.
The image was shared by supporters of the president.
Although Boric is diametrically opposed on the ideological spectrum to Bolsonaro, experienced diplomats at Itamaraty see him as different from other more traditional leftist leaders in the region.
The assessment is that he will not have such a nationalist stance in the economy as Fernández, for example. Chile is an important trade partner for Brazil.
The expectation is that he will have to make alliances with other parties, in order to move closer to the center. Their agenda on the left, they bet, will be more on the agenda of “customs”, such as gender issues.
To get elected, Boric had to adopt a more moderate tone in his speech and reconciled with the Concertación, the center-left alliance that ruled Chile for 20 years. He represents the new generation of left-wing politicians who emerged from the student riots of 2011.
The result of the Chilean election also marks the defeat of Kast, who supports banners considered socially conservative and is an admirer of dictator Augusto Pinochet (whose regime killed more than 3,000 people, according to official estimates).
.
