by
Mark Weisbrot
The
world is watching Brazil’s elections, probably as never before.
“Latin America’s latest menace: Bolsonaro Presidente,” screams
the headline on the cover of The Economist. This conservative
UK magazine would love to see the Workers’ Party (PT) disappear
from Brazilian politics, but even they cannot stomach Bolsonaro, who
in 2016 dedicated his vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff to the
colonel responsible for her torture.
Many
have made the comparison to Trump, and of course there are
similarities ― especially in the overt racism and misogyny of the
two politicians. And both owe a large part of their rise to the
failure of neoliberal economic policies. But Brazil’s trajectory to
an even more dangerous threat scenario is a right-wing reaction by
the country’s traditional, corrupt elite against the PT’s
positive economic reforms that benefited the vast majority of
Brazilians.
By 2014,
under the presidencies of Lula and Dilma, poverty had been reduced by
55 percent and extreme poverty by 65 percent, and unemployment hit a
record low of 4.9 percent. Some of these gains were lost when the
economy then went into a deep recession that year, and the right took
advantage of that downturn to seize what it could not win at the
ballot box in four consecutive elections.
They
impeached Dilma and removed her from office without even accusing her
of an actual crime; and then Judge Moro sent Lula to prison for a
“bribe” he never accepted, in a “trial” without material
evidence. The US government sent experts from its Justice Department
to “help” with investigations, and quietly showed support for the
removal of Dilma.
But the
bulk of the Brazilian electorate could see that although all the
major political parties were infected with corruption, the
decapitation of the Workers’ Party was not about justice. Lula
retained a commanding lead in the polls even after his conviction.
And so it became necessary to bar Lula from running for president, to
jail him, and restrict his access to the media.
It
didn’t work; Fernando Haddad, former mayor of São Paulo and Lula’s
original pick for vice presidential candidate, has risen rapidly in
the polls and will likely face Bolsonaro in the second round of the
election.
Some
major media voices who are too ashamed to openly support Bolsonaro
have tried to paint this election as a contest between “extremists”
of the right and left. But this is a dangerous false equivalency.
Haddad is a moderate social democrat, a label which also fairly
describes the policies of Lula and Dilma before him. They allowed the
economy to grow much faster than it did during the Cardoso years,
expanded conditional cash transfer programs for the poor, raised the
minimum wage, and increased public investment.
On the
other side, the current government’s constitutional amendment to
freeze real government spending for decades is an extremist measure
to even the vast majority of economists. This zealotry has brought
forth more virulent fanaticism along with the politics of fear and
hate. Bolsonaro and other former military – including his vice
presidential candidate ― have raised doubts about whether they will
acceptunwanted election results. For the first time in decades, the
threat of a military dictatorship is surfacing. No responsible
journalism should ignore this threat, nor legitimize the extremism
that strengthens it. And anyone who cares about democracy in Brazil
would have to support Bolsonaro’s opponent in the second round of
the election.
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