Lula vs. Bolsonaro, Brazil Has Its Own Dark Sequel Brewing

-Analysis-

Brazil is living a political déjà vu. Leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is working through a third presidential term, reemerging from political and personal misfortunes that included 580 days in prison — and now it’s the turn of his rightist predecessor Jair Bolsonaro to taste the threat of prosecution for his own excesses, including accusations that he led a coup to overturn the 2022 general election.

With both politicians, recent electoral victories were owed to voters tiring of and reacting to both the arrogance and corruption of Lula and his Workers Party (PT), and Bolsonaro’s antics and contempt for democratic norms and forms.

At one point it seemed Lula was finished in politics, notably when he wound up in jail, and many may be thinking the same about his nemesis Bolsonaro, as he faces the consequences of possibly conniving with an angry mob to overthrow his successor.

Still, the former president’s supporters put on a show of force at a mass rally in São Paulo on February 25, though it is too soon to tell whether this was the start of Bolsonaro’s political come-back or a warning to judges.

The assault on government buildings in the capital of Brasilia in 2023 was partly inspired by Bolsonaro’s charge that Lula had cheated in the elections — in a sinister echo of events in the United States after the 2020 victory of Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

Reacting to charges of his complicity in the assault, Bolsonaro told the crowd on February 25, “What is a coup? It’s tanks on the street, weapons, a plot. None of that happened in Brazil. Now they’re calling a planned decree to defend the State a coup. A coup using the Constitution?” That itself was an inadvertent admission that a document with plans for a rebellion had existed.

Coup proof

Investigations into Bolsonaro’s possible sedition have relied on the testimonies of his former aide-de-camp (ADC), Lieutenant-Colonel Mauro Cid. From what he has said, at a June 2022 meeting, Bolsonaro “suggested ways of attacking the electoral system,” but was also involved in drafting the purported coup document after the elections, the Folha de São Paulo daily reports.That is the document Bolsonaro cited at his rally.

The rally provided the picture he wanted to show.

And the government was delighted he did: the cabinet chief (prime minister), Rui Costa, swiftly said it must have been the first time “in history (suspected criminals had) called a meeting in a public square and confessed to the crime… in front of a crowd.”

The ex-president is feeling the heat of a range of accusation, which have already led to condemnation for falsely denouncing electoral fraud, confiscation of his passport and a ban on holding public office until 2030. But his rally provided the picture he wanted to show: he still had his mass of supporters in spite of the lawsuits, and an ability to divide the country and inflict political costs should the offensive against him persist.

Avoid the martyrs

When he began his third term, Lula was disinclined to subject his rival to reprisals that could make him a martyr and aid his political recovery. Best to let things go. It was Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court judge who had for years been the target of Bolsonaro’s attacks, who decided to pursue a lawsuit that could end the ex-leader’s political career. Today, Lula should recall that he won the presidency with the slightest of majorities, and that was thanks to the centrist votes of a middle class that had tired of Bolsonaro’s extremism.

The electoral weight of this bourgeois sector forced PT to tone down the red in its socialism, and even show the Socialist Lula praying like a Christian. But it is more likely to be the economic rather than religious question that is decisive, with municipal elections slated for October. The PT was soundly beaten in the last municipal elections in 2020, and Bolsonaro’s mass rally may have been a nod at the coveted middle-class electorate.

Blast from the past

Lula might be wise to review his penchant for the 1970s-style discourse, which is harming his standing as national leader, especially when the economy is as touch-and-go as it is. Instead of insisting socialist Venezuela is a democracy, he might condemn its regime’s renewed assault on the opposition and NGOs. He should stop intimating that Ukraine is somehow responsible for the war Russia is waging on it; and break his scandalous silence and condemn the death in prison of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny.

These voters insist the ballot boxes were tampered with.

He was wrong to compare the nightmare of Gaza Palestinians with the Holocaust, for downgrading the scale of that unique calamity. This irrepressible nostalgia for another period of socialist struggles, the 1970s and the Cold War, could simply send votes back into the Bolsonaro camp. That is not a pretty prospect for Brazil, considering what Bolsonaro and his diehard fans represents.

Even the conservative business daily Valor Económico finds them unnerving: “These are voters who insist the ballot boxes were tampered with and know nothing of the progress made in this government,” the newspaper wrote. “They are blaming it for the dizzy rise in prices and for rampant corruption. It is a mass of people infected with the denial virus and the contagion this time is bigger, and more resistant.”