October 2022: A Very Toxic Month in Brazil

A Carnival of fake news!

I landed in Rio de Janeiro on the eve of the first round of the presidential elections.  Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing president lost to come-back kid Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva.  The incumbent had about six million votes less than Lula; but it was not the rout the polls had predicted.  This result made Brazilians either anxious or elated depending on one’s politics.  

I was behind with my blogging and eager to write something, but the tense and poisonous situation worked as a creative block.  One month later inspiration returned:  Lula had won the runoff, but barely.  Alleluia all the same: Bolsonaro had been ousted.  Between the Bad and the Ugly, the Bad had won!  For the Good, Brazilians will have to wait a bit longer.  



In Brazil (as in the United States) presidential elections take place every four years.  Until now, they played more like a soccer game with passionate fans and spirited jingles.  This year they morphed into high-octane brawls fueled by an onslaught of vicious and creepy fake news.  Signs of the time?  October was the month of pervasive misleading information; it was like living in a world of “alternative facts” [1].  Bolsonaro’s fake news team went into overdrive and reached a level of destructive creativity rarely achieved before.  At 77, Lula is ten years older than Bolsonaro and a left-wing politician of the old school; his campaign squad was underpowered.  The right wing’s social media was run by an army of young people who fell all over themselves to throw in the most outlandish fake news to dizziness and addictive levels. 

It was fun at the beginning.  Then I lost interest and even got angry at the relentless offensive.   Like Russian rockets over Ukraine, fake news hit everybody indiscriminately.  Bolsonaro’s followers were totally immersed in this “alternative fact” world; they never checked their information and looked at facts with suspicion.  Even friends bombarded me with false and misleading information.  I had to take cover and I honed my fake news’s spotting and identification skills.  I can now proudly report that I became a reference source among my peers.  This was the perfect exercise to keep my brain stimulated and keep Alzheimer at bay! 

In 2018, most of my friends voted for Bolsonaro, utterly disgusted by Lula and his Worker party (PT)’s corruption scandals.  President Dilma Rousseff [2]’s mishandling of the economy made the situation unbearable.  Furthermore, Lula’s million dollars graft machine ended up destabilizing parts of Latin America and Africa.  The most prestigious Brazilian construction companies drove this corruption.  I joined street marches for changes and Bolsonaro was feted as a fresh face, although he was not the Spring chicken people believed he was, he had been a low-level congressman for decades.   Now, after four years of Bolsonaro, many Brazilians have buyer’s remorse, admitted or not. 

In 2021, Lula’s graft conviction was annulled by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.  Although, he was released from jail, the ruling did not find him innocent.  His political rights were restored until his case was sent to another court.  Lula and Bolsonaro are equally loathed by Brazilians.  One half of the population regards Lula as a corrupt politician who should be in jail.  For the other half, Bolsonaro is a “deranged” far-right populist, a would-be dictator who schemes to tear up the democratic institutions.  

Lula and Bolsonaro fractured many families.  With conspiracy theories bubbling out of the coffee machine, family meals have been tense, and I heard that many family members were watching the news and fake news in separate rooms!  Even favela gangsters were torn apart wondering who was best to protect their illegal businesses.  It was a real existential choice.  Now that the election is over, some anger management is needed to tame tempers.  With campaign money no longer available, the Bolsonarista’s fake news machine will significantly cool down.   Bolsonaro may be out of the presidential palace, but his legacy, labeled Bolsonarismo, will live on, at least until Lula starts negotiating with a confrontational, truculent and spoilt congress.

Let’s back track a bit.  The margin between Lula and Bolsonaro was unexpectedly razor thin.  How could a president so unpopular during the Covid pandemic manage such an extraordinary comeback?  Simple, in addition to the fake news blitz, Bolsonaro used and abused his presidential resources and distributed taxpayer monies left and right.  And here comes the “secret budget” or slush fund that the government hands over to leading but complaisant lawmakers to use in a discretionary fashion to pay for their pet projects [3].  Thanks to the absence of oversight, many overpriced goodies are purchased; in other word, the projects are conduit for institutional clientelism, embezzlement and vote buying.  Happy with these payoffs, lawmakers enthusiastically amended the Constitution to allow the government to make last minute extra budgetary cash distributions to the poor.  At the end, everybody won except the taxpayer.  Expectedly, a large number of slush fund beneficiaries were reelected.  Alas, poor people were ungrateful, and many pocketed the handout but voted for Lula. 

With such an uncooperative congress, Lula has his job cut out for him.  Fortunately, he is a savvy negotiator and has been in this position before.  In Brasilia, negotiation means exchanging favors, in other words opening the graft pandora box.  Some 25 parties are registered in Brazil, with a large amorphous group of lawmakers sitting in the middle.  Their adaptable political ideology allows them to back whoever comes around, either from the left or the right as long as more money is offered.

Déjà vu all over again [4]. 

 

 

 

Cartoon by Vasco Gargalo, 2022.

[1] Kellyanne Conway, 2017.

[2] Also, from PT.

[3] This is a short cut: the process is opaquer and tortuous.

[4] I never understood why Lula is so hyped outside Brazil!

Comments

  1. Brilliant Beatrice succint no frills objective over all these months, years of Bolsonaro aligned with radical countries a world pariah , destructive
    Ideology
    towards his own country and its democracy already hanging by a string in South America..i.e Amazon Lula...hopefully bolster education, health, culture education....economy last not least a wishful transparency...
    ..Beatrice thank you for sharing as always a delight to await your blogs

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  2. From Brazil. "Thanks B. Another fun and informative blog. I was also fed up with the toxic environment and avoided argument as much as possible. I agree with you: inferno ou purgatorio. "

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, Beatrice, your report is very much to the point. I don t remember having seen such an election, with so much hate and so many lies, in the last twenty years. And somehow I have the feeling that it is not yet over: there are still many excited bolsonaristas on the streets.

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  4. From Brazil.:" Disinformation still flows but (as you hinted) in far less volume. O mito has no clothes. Even Bolsonaristas Evangelical pastors have congratulated godless Lula! Good blog."

    ReplyDelete
  5. From Rio:" Parabens, descricao perfeita sobre as eleicoes. Nao se pode identificar o melhor, apenas entender o texto." (Sorry, I can't copy the accents).

    ReplyDelete
  6. From Rio: "Excelente seu artigo!!! Parabens." (Comment received via Whatsapp).

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  7. FROM France via Whatsapp: Toujours très bien écrit avec un vocabulaire recherché. Ce qui est perturbant est que les terrains d'entente entre ces 2 parties qui représentent une part importante de la population sont inexistants."

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  8. From Europe:" Enjoying your vivid description of the days before Lula’s victory. Now back to square one !
    Woeful lack of truly honest leaders instead of crazies all over the world. Putin’s failed criminal “special military operation”, post Brexiteer Tories crashing in the UK, Berlusconi’s backed election of extreme right firebrand Giorgia Meloni in Italy and, just now, very probable victory of Republicans backed by Trump in the USA.
    Keep blogging Beatrice, we need you to help us to make some sense out of all this mess !!"

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  9. From the US: " I finally found time to read your blog. Good description of the election insanity in Brazil. We too have been through much, if not more of the same here in the US. The ads got so ugly towards the end of the campaign that many people, not the least of them me, were disgusted to the core. it was like an endless barrage from the meanest, least disciplined kid you ever knew."

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  10. From the UK:" I read your last blog and I thought it sounded a lot like the UK in terms of chaos and corruption. We have slipped right down the world rankings in stable places, and God knows what our chancellor will hit us with in terms of tax hikes and public service cuts."

    ReplyDelete

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