Alessandra Ferguson
Editor’s Note: Arick Wierson is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and former Senior Media Advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He has a masters in economics from Universidade do Estado de São Paulo in Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil and has worked in the country for nearly 30 years advising corporate and political clients on communication strategies. The views expressed in this note belong exclusively to its author.
(CNN) – Over 120 million Brazilians went to the polls this Sunday to vote in the second round of presidential elections in which former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva made a surprising return to politics.
With 50.9% of the vote, Lula defeated the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, who got 49.1%, which represents a difference of about 2 million votes.
It was a very tight election and the final result was only known after nearly all the votes of the country’s 577,000 electronic voting machines were counted.
On the one hand, Lula’s victory was a strong rebuke to Bolsonaro’s irreverent and often controversial style of government, which earned him the mocking nickname “Trump of the Tropics”.
Who is Jair Bolsonaro: his career, his family and the list of controversies involving him
In fact, Bolsonaro has not only received the support of former US President Donald Trump, but, like him, has been widely criticized for his handling of the coronavirus, which according to the World Health Organization caused nearly 700,000 deaths in the Village.
Furthermore, Bolsonaro’s aggressive anti-LGBTQ agenda, resolutely anti-environmental policies and authoritarian tendencies have made him something of a pariah in the international media.
the return of lullaby
Lula, who has already been president twice, from 2003 to 2010, did not come to these elections without charge. In fact, if it weren’t for his conviction overturned for a jurisdictional quibble for his role in “Operation Car Wash”, one of the biggest public corruption scandals in the world, Lula would still be serving his 12-year prison sentence. .
Why did Lula da Silva receive a prison sentence (which was later overturned)?
Its critics feared that its return to public service could usher in a new wave of large-scale corruption and inefficiency in Brazil’s major state-owned companies.
Not since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s have Brazilians not faced two such conflicting candidates, each with diametrically opposed political perspectives for the country.
And with Lula winning by just over 2 million votes, while some 5 million votes were left blank or deliberately canceled by voters, it’s clear that a sizeable percentage of the voting population hasn’t bought any of her visions for. the country.
A deeply divided Brazil
Although it is still in its infancy, fears that Bolsonaro may not accept the results or even stage a coup are fading rapidly as the pro-Bolsonaro conservative media are also accepting the results.
This is the good news. The bad news is that now, on January 1, when Lula is sworn in for his third term as president, he will have to find a way to rule a deeply divided country with great distrust of the other side.
Unlike his previous victories, in which Lula took office with a clear mandate, getting over 60% of the votes in both 2002 and 2006, this time Lula not only achieved a narrow victory, but will face a congress. who continues to be very much aligned with Bolsonaro.
In fact, in the first round of the elections, at the beginning of October, the allies of the current president won a plurality of seats in both the House and the Senate.
Furthermore, with the results of the second round of Sunday’s government elections across the country, it is clear that Bolsonaro’s allies will be in power in 14 of Brazil’s 27 states, including the most economically important states of Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais.
Lula’s main challenges as president of Brazil: unite a divided country and protect the Amazon
A to-do list
And it is in this context that Lula will have to face seismic challenges on several fronts. Brazil has been in a kind of economic free fall since the start of the pandemic and has yet to fully recover.
Hunger has re-emerged as an urgent social concern, while racial inequalities have been exacerbated in recent years. Urban violence continues to terrorize cities across the country and systemic corruption continues to ramp up.
Perhaps most important to the rest of the world is Brazil’s role in fighting global warming – the country is home to much of the Amazon rainforest. Under Bolsonaro, deforestation in the Amazon increased. Lula, for his part, stressed the need to protect the forest in his victory speech, stating that his administration “would fight for zero deforestation”.
That said, mobilizing the political force needed to tackle these problems in this country of 215 million people will not be easy.
But if there is a bright side to Lula’s victory, it is that both regional powers and financial markets seem willing to lend a hand to help the incoming president with his government agenda.
Lula will be welcomed with open arms by many of Latin America’s left-wing leaders who have been pushed to victory in recent years, as well as by global financial markets, where investors are cautiously bullish on the growth prospects of a Lula-led Brazil.
Lula would do well to lean on these international alliances as he begins to form a government. But perhaps more importantly, Lula’s success, and that of the country, will likely depend on the president’s political abilities and his ability to extend an olive branch to the key political leaders who supported Bolsonaro, as he tries to build a coalition that can help you reach your political agenda.
On the Brazilian right there is already talk of the possibility of impeaching Lula, a very concrete possibility with extensive historical precedents, since two of the eight presidents that Brazil has had since the return to democracy in 1985 were dismissed before the end of their term. . .
Much is at stake for Brazil. And a lot is at stake for Lula, not only politically, but personally as well.
The CNN thread
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
