Brazil’s Trump rides wave of populist anger
Far-right candidate heavy favourite to win election second round
Acandidate with uncanny parallels to US President Donald Trump has won the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, raising the strong prospect of a far-right populist at the helm of Latin America’s largest nation.
Jair Bolsonaro — a 63-year old former army captain whose unorthodox candidacy was laughed off by pundits only a year ago — was riding a wave of indignation against a corrupt class of traditional politicians.
Bolsonaro captured 46.7 per cent of the vote compared to 28.5 per cent for former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad. They will face each other in a runoff on October 28.
Bolsonaro’s first-round win leaves him standing on the edge of a historic if divisive victory. Gaining the presidency would mark a stunning march forward for a burgeoning global movement of right-wing nationalists who have already captured presidencies in the US, Eastern Europe countries and the Philippines.
“Without a big party, without funds, without television time, but with sincerity and truth, we’ve taken down figures who thought that, by doing partnerships and deals with the large parties, through television, they would get elected,” Bolsonaro told reporters while voting in Rio de Janeiro.
Leftist Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad, 55, is running as a stand-in for former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The former president is now behind bars on a corruption conviction and was barred from seeking office.
The campaign to lead Brazil has harboured echoes of the 2016 race for the White House, with Brazilians polarised over Bolsonaro’s legacy of incendiary remarks denigrating women, minorities and the LBGT community. Bolsonaro once said a gay son was the product of not enough “beatings” and told a female rival she was not worth raping because she was “too ugly”. Last year, he said some descendants of slaves were fat and lazy.
A seven-term congressmen who has praised Brazil’s previous military dictatorship, Bolsonaro has long loitered on Brazil’s political fringe. His path towards electability, experts say, has been paved by a failure of Brazil’s political classes: Large swaths of the elected elite have been deeply tarnished by corruption. In contrast, Bolsonaro is viewed as a relatively untainted outsider. Many Brazilians appeared to be supporting Bolsonaro out of fear of a Workers’ Party return.
From the Amazon region — where a backlash is brewing over a surge of Venezuelan migrants — to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro won votes even among groups he has insulted. His tactic has been to hammer down on the three issues Brazilians care about the most: the economy, corruption and a crime wave, which he has vowed to tackle with zero-tolerance.
“I voted for Bolsonaro because I’m tired of politicians being the same,” said Maria Aparecida de Oliveira, a 63-yearold housekeeper casting her ballot in an upper-middle class district of Sao Paulo. “Even if he is a little crazy, someone needs to bring change.”
“Bolsonaro is a strange phenomenon,” said Lucas de Aragao of Arko Advice, a political risk company in Brasilia. “It’s very hard to understand his movement, the why, the how. It doesn’t have any precedent in Brazil. Even some Lula voters are turning to him. It’s happened because Brazil loves this idea of a saviour, of a hero. And Bolsonaro now represents this image of a saviour as much as Lula does.”
Despite having same-sex marriage and quotas for minorities in universities, Brazil remains a socially conservative and religious nation. Bolsonaro has earned key support among an increasingly powerful group: evangelical voters. Many of Bolsonaro’s core backers are also huge fans of Trump. Like the US President, Bolsonaro is a tough-talker whose strongest followers include bands of angry white men. He champions “traditional values” but has been married three times. He directly connects with his followers via social media. His son Eduardo Bolsonaro, 34, operates as a political surrogate much in the way that Trump’s children do.
Yet Bolsonaro has been vague on the specific of his policies, largely implying them in fiery speeches. But he has vowed to crack down on the violent street gangs who control Brazil’s drug trade and loosen gun laws so civilians can fight fire with fire. He has pledged to stop attempts to loosen strict abortion laws and has alarmed environmentalists by saying he would seek development in the Amazon.
“He’s anti-woman, he’s anti-black, he’s anti-gay,” said Juliana Prado, 39, a Sao Paulo resident who works in finance and voted for Haddad. “He’s against everything.”— Washington Post