Strongman closes in on Brazil’s presidency
A dangerous and polarised time, says political scientist
Jair Bolsonaro, the divisive, far-right former army captain, has stormed to a huge lead in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections.
Jair Bolsonaro, the divisive, farright former army captain, stormed to a huge lead in the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections on Sunday as voters enraged by years of recession, corruption scandals and soaring crime rallied around his strongman message.
The result puts the seventime congressman on track for victory in the decisive, secondround vote on October 28, when he will face his closest challenger, Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad.
Bolsonaro’s domination on Sunday was so overwhelming that it briefly appeared that he might capture enough votes to forgo the need for a runoff round, something that hasn’t happened for 20 years. In the end, he wound up with 46.2%, just short of the majority needed to win outright, to Haddad’s 29.1%, electoral officials said.
Brazilian markets surged in early morning trading on Monday as investors digested greater chances of a Bolsonaro win. The real gained more than 3%, benchmark stock exchange futures jumped 5% and investor risk perception as measured by credit default swaps plunged.
Bolsonaro appeared to question the legitimacy of the results but indicated he was preparing for the second round. He said Brazilians had to choose between the values he represents – “family, God and justice”
– or becoming another Venezuela.
The odds of Bolsonaro being elected rose to 75% “not only because he started stronger than expected”, said Eurasia Group director Christopher Garman, but also because of the “strong anti-establishment sentiment”.
The next three weeks promise to be intense. For while Bolsonaro’s lead appears almost insurmountable, the millions of Brazilians who oppose his populist candidacy – and its undertones of misogyny, homophobia and dictatorship denial – will make a last-ditch effort to halt his march to the presidency. But they will be fighting forces not dissimilar to those that helped put Donald Trump in office in the US and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and gave the UK its Brexit shock.
“It’ll be three weeks of a dangerous and highly polarised scenario,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “The level of conflict will be very high,” he said, adding that both have to overcome very high rejection rates to win.
Whoever takes the helm of the $2-trillion economy faces the daunting prospect of finding jobs for the country’s 13-million unemployed, bringing down Brazil’s staggering levels of crime and plugging a fiscal deficit worth more than 7% of GDP. To do that, the president will need the co-operation of a highly fragmented legislature and a society that has become increasingly divided since the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
In the second round, both men will have equal television time, meaning they will be far more exposed to the electorate than during the first round, when 13 candidates were vying for the presidency.
For Haddad, the key question is whether he can emerge from the shadow of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is now in jail for corruption and money-laundering. The former education minister’s meteoric rise in the polls ahead of Sunday’s vote was almost entirely due to the Workers’ Party building its campaign on the slogan “Haddad is Lula”.
Ciro Gomes, the third-placed candidate with 12.5%, has indicated he will support Haddad in the second round, but their combined votes still fall well short of Bolsonaro’s total.
“Haddad will try to bring a conciliatory message to win over the undecided,” said Thiago de Aragao, of Arko Advice, a Brasilia-based political risk consultancy.
BRAZILIAN MARKETS SURGED IN EARLY MORNING TRADING AS INVESTORS DIGESTED GREATER CHANCES OF A BOLSONARO WIN