How Brazil’s democracy stepped back from the cliff

Oliver Stuenkel is a political analyst and a professor at the School of International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas in São Paulo.

Jair Bolsonaro’s historic defeat in Brazil’s presidential elections yesterday marks the 15th straight opposition victory in Latin America. Over the past years, not a single democratic leader in the region has managed to get re-elected or pick his or her successor. Anti-incumbency sentiment across the region – mostly a product of rising poverty and inequality, low growth and insufficient public services – is so dominant that it explains part of why Mr. Bolsonaro became the first president in Brazilian history not to win re-election.

Yet regional dynamics and a very challenging macroeconomic environment do not tell the whole story of why Brazil’s opposition pulled off a remarkable victory. After all, Mr. Bolsonaro enjoyed, like all his predecessors, a massive incumbency advantage involving the ability to spend more than $17.5-billion to temporarily increase his approval ratings.

Indeed, what is likely to have made the difference was an unprecedented opposition strategy of building a very broad pro-democracy alliance. Very soon after Mr. Bolsonaro’s election in 2018, a growing number of voices in the opposition, civil society, academia both at home and abroad, pointed out that Mr. Bolsonaro represented the gravest threat to Brazilian democratic rule since democratization in the late 1980s. Largely following up on his anti-democratic rhetoric based on the now well-known playbook of populists and autocrats-in-waiting in Hungary, Venezuela, Turkey, Nicaragua and former U.S. president Donald Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro sought to discredit Brazil’s voting system and attacked the media, universities, the judiciary and “globalist” conspiracies. Just like Mr. Trump, whom Mr. Bolsonaro openly admires, the Brazilian president emerged as a leading COVID-19 denialist yet systematically attacked Beijing during the pandemic for having produced the “China virus” in an act of “chemical warfare.” Just like his populist counterpart in Venezuela, Brazil’s president militarized his government, with more than 6,000 military men and women filling the ministries, many occupying key positions.

Aware of the fact that re-election tends to embolden populist candidates with an authoritarian rhetoric, countless Brazilian opposition figures put their egos aside over the past months and joined a remarkably broad coalition led by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (”Lula”), including far-left politicians like Guilherme Boulos, environmentalists like Marina Silva, former bankers and fiscal hawks like Henrique Meirelles and centrists like Aloysio Nunes. Most remarkably, it also included numerous politicians with a long bitter rivalry with Mr. da Silva’s Workers Party (PT). Though not explicitly supporting Mr. da Silva, influential institutions such as the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo signed a letter in support of democracy, a powerful signal that Mr. Bolsonaro could not expect to have industrial elites on his side if he attempted to illegally remain in power.

In the same way, Mr. da Silva chose a centre-right former governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin as his running mate, who had tried to unseat him from the presidency in 2006 and had, back then, accused Mr. da Silva of running for re-election to “return to the crime scene,” an allusion to corruption scandals during Mr. da Silva’s earlier time as president. This very broad tent has allowed the opposition to frame the election as a contest between democracy and autocracy, while also convincing many centrists that Mr. da Silva “Lula” will lead, if elected, a centrist government meant to overcome the extreme polarization that shaped the past four years. Rather than facing a fractured and ill-co-ordinated opposition, Mr. Bolsonaro was left largely isolated and has struggled to reach out to centrist voters, which explains why he ultimately lost his re-election bid.

While Brazil’s democracy stepped back from the cliff, it is far from safe. As of the time of writing, Mr. Bolsonaro had not yet conceded. Polls suggest that the majority of Bolsonaro voters would “not accept” a da Silva victory, suggesting that millions of Brazilians will question the incoming president’s legitimacy. Brazil is angrier, more unequal and far more polarized than when Mr. da Silva first became president 20 years ago. Despite mismanaging the pandemic, straining Brazil’s diplomatic ties with numerous countries, and actively undermining Brazil’s democratic institutions, more than 49 per cent of Brazilian voters were ready to provide Mr. Bolsonaro with a second mandate. While Mr. da Silva can be expected to form a governing majority in Congress, numerous Bolsonaro allies have triumphed in gubernatorial, congressional and Senate races. Bolsonarismo, a mix of social conservatism and yearning for strongman rule, is here to stay.

Finally, just like U.S. President Joe Biden, Mr. da Silva will face a tricky dilemma of striking a balance between looking forward and allowing the judiciary to analyze numerous alleged crimes committed by Mr. Bolsonaro and his key allies. While ensuring justice is key to setting a clear precedent, it may also end up further fanning the flames of polarization.