From Rio de Janeiro
Brazil completes five years of the breakdown of democracy in 2022. It was the second break since the 1964 coup, when the country had 21 years of military dictatorship. At that time, when the dictatorship ended in 1975, there was a long process of democratic transition, with a series of circumstances that made whatThe first civilian president was José Sarney, originally from the same military regime.
It was a conservative transition, in which democratization was limited to the reestablishment of the liberal political system. Nothing else has been democratized in the country: not land ownership, not the media, not the judicial system or any other instance of power in Brazilian society. The force of the left was small: it did not even get a direct vote for the election of the president of Brazil. Sarney was elected by an Electoral College.
The new transition
In 2022 a new democratic transition is drawn. All polls give the possibility of victory of Lula da Silva, even in the first round. No survey, no analysis points to the possibility that Jair Bolsonaro get re-elected. In turn, the launch of the judge’s candidacy Sergio Moro he has failed, since he has remained as one of the heap of candidates with very low indexes in the polls.
2022 will be an electoral campaign year, without a doubt. March is the deadline for the presentation of candidatures. Lula will be a candidate for the Workers’ Party (PT), with the support of other left-wing parties. There is speculation regarding whether Bolsonaro might withdraw from his candidacy, so as not to have to debate with Lula and not to suffer an overwhelming defeat. He might secure a parliamentary position, which would defend him from the serious accusations that weigh on him.
It will be, in any case, a sui generis campaign. Lula and Dilma Rousseff, victorious twice, never won in the first round. This time Lula is not the PT candidate. He is the candidate of all democratic and anti-colonial forces. His campaign includes the accumulated demands in these years of authoritarianism, denialism, arbitrariness, hatred and contempt for human lives and for democracy. That is why he represents the vast majority of Brazilians, marginalized from politics by those who used criticism of politics to exercise power in the most arbitrary way.
Antibolsonarismo
The antipetismus was surpassed by the antibolsonarismo. That is the key to the radical change in the situation in Brazil. Bolsonaro had used the oblivion of the experiences of the PT government to try to impor the idea that the current problems of the country would be legacies of what the PT had generated.
But the brutal character that Bolsonaro’s presidency has assumed, made him become the predominant character in Brazilian political life in the last three years. The rise in rejection of the president has made anti-colonization the fundamental factor that was generated in the last two years, until it extended into the last year of his first term.
Stage
Emerging from the trajectory of the PT and from his own experiences in government, Lula, as well as he got out of jail and recovered all his rights, He went on to lead the presidential polls. Hard to imagine how that situation can change.
Not by way of some kind of brutal fall in the support that Lula receives, nor by the recovery of Bolsonaro’s support, nor by the rise of some other candidate. This seems to be the attempt left to the non-Bolsonarist right, including the media. It would be taken back from the attempt, so far unsuccessful, to impose Judge Moro as his alternative candidate.
In this framework, everything indicates that, as time passes until October 2, the day of the first round of the presidential elections, Lula’s favoritism will be consolidated, with more and more people joining his candidacy. He already has the support of just over half of evangelicals. The most resistant sector is that of businessmen, who still mostly support Bolsonaro.
2022 is once more an important year in Brazil, decisive for the future of the country and, in some way, for the whole of the continent, along with the elections in Colombia. Lula and Gustavo Petro they are its central protagonists.
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