Bolsonaro Isn’t Playing His Trump Card For Now
Brazil seems on track to ensure a peaceful transfer of power
In September, The UnPopulist brought you a column by Magno Karl of Livres, a Brazilian classical liberal organization, on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who’s been dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics.” The nickname, while apt, isn’t exact: Unlike Donald Trump, Bolsonaro served in the military, and he was repeatedly elected to political office (as a member of Brazil’s National Congress) before winning the presidency.
But as Karl detailed, Bolsonaro’s rise was Trumpian: He gained public attention through minor TV fame and provocative and divisive comments. He generated political momentum through the aggressive use of social media, through claims to be an “outsider” who would reform a corrupt political system, and through the mobilization of conservative Christians’ support despite no obvious religious convictions of his own. Once elected president, Bolsonaro continued his antics and divisiveness in office.
Troublingly, Bolsonaro also seemed intent on reproducing Trump’s reelection script. Lagging in the presidential polls earlier this year, Bolsonaro repeatedly criticized Brazil’s voting process, apparently preparing to blame electoral fraud for his possible loss in the upcoming election. When the final round of the election was held last Sunday, the stage seemed set for a Trumpian aftermath: Bolsonaro narrowly lost the presidency to his opponent, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 50.9% to 49.1%, despite having led earlier in the day. Bolsonaro’s supporters took to the streets, blocking roads and disrupting commerce.
For nearly two days after his defeat, Bolsonaro refused to speak publicly. When he did break his silence, he sent an ambiguous message, saying the presidential transition of power would move forward, while never conceding he’d lost the election. This left a question mark hanging over the transition: Was a Trumpian Jan. 6-style uprising still ahead? Or might Bolsonaro take the Stacey Abrams route of simply contesting the election’s legitimacy?
Seeking insight, UnPopulist Editor-at-Large Tom Shull conducted an interview with Karl this week about his prognosis for Brazil in the days ahead. The interview, which appears below, has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tom Shull: President Bolsonaro has finally spoken publicly about Sunday’s presidential election, nearly two days after he was declared the loser in his reelection bid against Workers’ Party candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There were fears that Bolsonaro would dispute his very narrow loss to “Lula,” as da Silva is known, and employ some stratagem to stay in office. Where do things stand now?
Magno Karl: Bolsonaro’s two-day silence after his defeat was broken by a short speech on Tuesday, when his supporters were already blocking highways in more than 100 locations, in more than 10 states, around the country. In his speech, he acknowledged his followers’ feelings of “indignation and injustice,” but he didn’t say that the election results were illegitimate, and he told the protesters that they shouldn’t be like the leftists, engaging in vandalism or trespassing on people’s property.
He did not mention the elections, except to thank people for their votes. It was not a standard concession speech: There was no gracious mention to the winner, nor an order for the protesters to go home. It wasn’t what people would expect from a solid democracy, but neither was it a call for resistance.
Between Sunday night, when the election results were confirmed, and Bolsonaro’s speech on Tuesday afternoon, many other important players in Brazilian politics had spoken, including the heads of the Electoral Justice, the Deputies’ Chamber (Congress’ lower house) and the Senate (Congress’ upper house). They all accepted the election’s results. Just as in the election’s first round, on Oct. 2, last Sunday’s voting occurred without any major incident. It was then hard for Bolsonaro to make a case against its results.
His team did try to raise questions about the number of advertisement spots that his campaign should have received on a few local radio stations. In the week before the election’s second round, Brazil’s communications’ minister called around to the media and spoke about the topic, but later it became clear that if there were any mistakes about the radio advertisements, they had come from Bolsonaro’s campaign itself.
So there would have been no grounds for Bolsonaro to try to cling to power, and there would have been no support in the Brazilian political establishment, media or any institutions for such a move—not even the military. Not a single member of the armed forces came out against the election results. It is still too early for us to conclude that Bolsonaro won’t say that the elections were stolen, but I don’t think that if he does, it will have any significant impact on the transition of presidential administrations.
If anything, his 48-hour disappearance and his refusal to send his supporters home—supporters who were blocking highways and openly advocating for a coup d’état led by the army—will only isolate Bolsonaro farther on the extreme right.
Shull: There’s a separate question of how Bolsonaro’s own supporters will react in the days to come. The blocked roads reportedly disrupted the distribution of fuel, market goods and grain for export. What do you see in the days ahead? Do you think most voters view the election result as legitimate? Are there likely to be problems in the lead-up to the transition of power on Jan. 1?
Karl: Unfortunately, Bolsonaro’s speech on Tuesday did not send a clear message that he had lost the election and that his supporters could do nothing about it. On Wednesday, a national holiday, there were more demonstrations, this time in front of army barracks as well. Only later that day did Bolsonaro record a video in which he said that blocking roads is not a legitimate method of protest.
I believe his supporters will eventually go home, and things will settle down by the end of the week. The vast majority of Brazil’s population voted on Sunday and went to work on Monday. There’s no question regarding the election’s results, except for a few radicalized and undemocratic supporters of Bolsonaro.
Unless the next two months bring us some new development or an unforeseen scandal, I don’t really foresee a problematic transition of power. It has been rumored that Bolsonaro won’t be present at Lula’s inauguration, but even that would not necessarily cause any problems for the process. The road blockages and Bolsonaro’s silence regarding the elections were probably the best they could do to protest the election results. The Brazilian political establishment and the media will not give them any opportunity to take it further. Even if Bolsonaro eventually joins the protesters and openly questions the legitimacy of Lula’s election, as I believe he eventually will, he will only increase his own political isolation, instead of putting up any significant hurdle to the effective transition of power.
Shull: In the longer term, do you think Bolsonaro and his supporters will stand aside, or will they remain as a political force and seek Bolsonaro’s re-election in 2026? It appears many of Bolsonaro’s conservative allies did well in Brazil’s congressional and state elections.
Karl: There is certainly space for a right-of-center opposition to Lula’s third term, but it remains to be seen if Bolsonaro and his movement will be strong enough to last these next four years. Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress have increased in number and the bolsonarismo is a strong political force in many states. However, some of those elected as supporters of Bolsonaro have been supporters of Lula in the past, and the new president will attempt to attract a significant share of these politicians back into supporting his government.
As things stand right now, Bolsonaro should be the leading opposition candidate in 2026. But let’s not forget that four years ago Lula was sitting in jail, and that today’s vice president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin, a historic adversary of Lula and the Workers’ Party, received less than 5% of the vote in the presidential elections. Four years is a very long time in Brazilian politics, and a lot can change.
Shull: How do you think Brazilian politics will look moving forward? Do you foresee ongoing tension or violence? Axios recently reported the arrest of a Bolsonaro ally who allegedly threatened a Supreme Court judge and threw grenades at police, and it referenced a recent university study that found that reports of politically motivated violence more than doubled in the months leading up to the first round of presidential voting on Oct. 2.
Karl: There will be isolated cases, I am sure, but tensions will subside eventually. Bolsonaro’s style of governing was very belligerent. He kept his supporters always on the alert against Congress, against the Supreme Court, against the opposition. Lula will likely keep politics within its institutional limits, as he promised repeatedly during his campaign.
But things can change. Lula can be belligerent too, as he demonstrated in the past, particularly when he and his party were cornered by corruption scandals. And here’s another twist: Oddly, one of Lula’s scandals was denounced by Roberto Jefferson, Lula’s former ally and a current ally of Bolsonaro. Jefferson is the very same politician who was recently arrested for shooting and throwing grenades at police officers.
Shull: In September, you indicated that Lula was not an attractive alternative to Bolsonaro, writing, “Sad is the nation that replaces a right-leaning populist with a left-leaning populist.” You added, “Brazil should not elect Lula, who is still facing legal charges that should have been completely resolved before he was allowed to run for president again.” What political and economic prospects do you see for Brazil in the next year or two under Lula’s presidency?
Karl: The country will be quieter politically, and we will go back to normal government business, much like the U.S. resumed its “normal political life” once Joe Biden took over and Donald Trump lost the ability to start political crises from his Twitter account. Without a president that antagonizes them every day, the media will give Lula a break, and he will construct support for his government in Congress using the usual political tools. In the best-case scenario, Lula will build his coalition by exchanging political appointments to positions in his government for votes and support in Congress. The worst-case scenario is the direct transaction of political support for cash: In exchange for votes in Congress, representatives of the executive branch or members of Congress who support the government approach members of Congress with generous money offers, either for them or for improvements in their electoral strongholds. This has happened before, during Lula’s first term, between 2003 and 2006.
The economy will be a massive challenge in the first half of Lula’s term. In 2017, Brazil instituted a spending ceiling to cap government spending, but Lula has stated that it will be “redesigned.” He hasn’t given any details about what that means, but it will probably give the government more room for spending. Despite the relative fiscal responsibility of Bolsonaro’s government, it did exceed the spending limits imposed by the spending cap.
There is already a piece of legislation being discussed, ahead of Lula’s inauguration, aimed at giving the new government more room to spend in 2023 and fulfill Lula’s campaign promises. Lula’s transition team has promised to release next week an estimate of the cost to Brazilian taxpayers of his campaign promises. Some say it could be around $40 billion. It is hard to see any indication of fiscal responsibility in the next administration at this moment.
Shull: Lula favors policies very different from Bolsonaro’s, from gun control to environmental protection, but do you think he will avoid some of Bolsonaro’s more destructive populist behavior, such as questioning elections and baiting foreign leaders?
Karl: Lula and Bolsonaro have a few similarities. They both tend to talk too much, for example, but they look at politics from very different standpoints. Lula prides himself on being liked and would not go out of his way to deliberately offend foreign leaders or neighboring countries. There’s nothing in Lula’s history to indicate that he would question an election either.
Bolsonaro spent most of his political career as an isolated congressman, a pariah in the Brazilian political landscape, with very little to lose. Lula is a member of the establishment—the founder and leader of Brazil’s largest and most important political party. They are very different political animals and have very different sets of supporters. Their personalities are also fairly different, and this helps to explain their behavior as president: Bolsonaro flourishes in conflict; Lula likes being loved.
Shull: In general, do you see differences between Bolsonaro’s brand of populism and Lula’s? And is there a risk that Lula’s past corruption and possible legal trouble, together with Brazil’s ongoing economic problems, might actually strengthen Bolsonaro’s brand of populism?
Karl: Their similarities lie in their ability to communicate directly with the people, beyond political-ideological borders, and in their willingness to spend taxpayer’s money to advance their political goals, irrespective of the state’s actual spending capacity. But Bolsonaro bases his undemocratic advances on the possibility of an army intervention, while Lula tends to rely on his support among organized labor and left-wing political institutions.
Bolsonaro built his political brand around law-and-order discourse, and the election of Lula is bliss for this sort of politics. For Bolsonaro’s supporters, Lula’s election is already “the criminal coming back to the crime scene,” and any corruption case—or any hint of corruption in Lula’s administration—will be an easy political point for Bolsonaro to score.
On the other hand, corruption is not really a topic capable of defining an election in Brazil unless it is something really horrible. Brazilians are desensitized to corruption, because we assume that all politicians are corrupt. Thus, we can say that corruption will definitely be an important topic in the next four years, but jobs, violence and economic recovery will be far ahead in the voters’ list before they head to the polls again in 2026.
Thinking of the future, I believe that all right-of-center political initiatives in Brazil should build their own grassroots groups, recruit young people who are tired of both lulismo and bolsonarismo, and distance themselves from Bolsonaro and his supporters, even if he still commands a relevant share of the votes here. Unfortunately, politicians will probably just focus on the short term, where their own interests are at stake, and try to gather up Bolsonaro’s electoral crumbs.
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