Lula’s presidential victory in Brazil is sweet, but will he be able to govern?
The Workers’ party (PT) supporters were out in force last night in the centre of São Paulo, pretty much as they were 20 years ago when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first won the Brazilian presidency. Then, as now, convoys of celebrating Lula-supporting Petistadrivers honked their horns, with their chanting, flagwaving passengers precariously hanging out of car windows.
That win – which followed three unsuccessful runs – was sweet. This victory – Lula’s third – is perhaps even more gratifying because the former trade union leader has come back from imprisonment, defied his political enemies and condemned his nemesis, Jair Bolsonaro, to defeat. And last night there was an element of relief in the joyous mood because, for the moment at least, the incumbent rightwing populist’s dark threats to overturn the result had failed to materialise.
But the country that Lula da Silva will lead will be very different from what it was when he took office at the beginning of 2003. Yesterday’s election shows just how divided the country has become. Over the past year and a half, opinion polls have consistently underestimated the support that Bolsonaro enjoys, suggesting that many conservatives either refuse to take part in polling or are shy about their beliefs. Ahead of the first round, polls suggested Bolsonaro would win no more than 37% of the vote: he won 43%. In advance of Sunday’s vote most polls predicted that Lula would win by between four and six percentage points, but in the actual ballot, Bolsonaro narrowed the gap to 1.8 points.
Moreover, Bolsonaro won in 14 of Brazil’s 27 states, dominating in a swath of territory that stretches from the Atlantic coast to the savannah lands of the centre-west. In the wealthier and more developed states, Bolsonaro won by handsome majorities. Fernando Haddad, the defeated presidential candidate four years ago and a key member of Lula’s campaign team, was celebrating alongside Lula on the team’s victory bus last night. But he was defeated decisively by Bolsonaro’s candidate – Tarcísio de Freitas, a former soldier and army engineer – in the race to become governor of São Paulo state, Brazil’s most populous region. Bolsonaro triumphed spectacularly, too, in the prosperous farming belt of the centre-west.
Lula scraped a victory in the bellwether state of Minas Gerais, but owed his national success to the landslide achieved in the 10 relatively poor northeastern states. Polls showed that those living on incomes of less than $400 a month were more likely to vote for Lula, and that anyone better off than that tended to favour Bolsonaro; 70% of people in Bahia – the state with the highest black population – voted for Lula. Evangelical Christians – who now number about a third of the population, perhaps double the number when Lula first took office – also tend to be big Bolsonaro fans.
It is the strength of this conservative bloc that helps explain why the right performed so well in the first round. Back in 2018, the right made gains at the expense of the middle-ofthe-road social democratic parties that in one way or another have played an important role in government since the end of military rule in 1985. The shakeup amounted to something of a political earthquake. The remarkable thing about this year’s election is that the right bettered that performance.
The most eye-catching development has been the election to congressional seats of some of the most controversial figures in Bolsonaro’s administration. Eduardo Pazuello, for instance, the army general who as health minister was sacked ignominiously after presiding over the disastrous management of the Covid pandemic, won a seat in the house. Overall, rightwing parties increased their representation in the lower house from 240 to 249 deputies, just under half the total of 513. Lula’s PT and its allies have only 141, so the president-elect will need to reach out to the centre if he is to govern effectively.
That means that he will probably need to strike deals with exactly the same political leaders – the notorious self-serving conservative politicians of the Centrão (“big centre”) – who have been allied with Bolsonaro over the past two and half years. This will complicate hugely the task of managing the economy and bringing a swelling fiscal deficit (expected to reach about 8% of GDP in 2023) under control. Over the past few months Bolsonaro has thrown money at voters, handing out subsidies and social benefits with abandon. Pro-government congressional leaders have channelled vast sums towards the pet projects of loyalist legislators.
The congressional balance could even hinder progress in areas such as the environment, where Lula could make gains simply by revitalising state agencies that have been neglected and underfunded by Bolsonaro. Between 2004 and 2012, PT-led governments won international plaudits for their success in reducing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Agencies such as the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources played a big part in that. But the president-elect will need to secure congressional agreement if he is to get its programmes back on track. The Centrão leaders will be sure to exact a heavy price for their support.
Lula will take over a deeply divided and troubled country. To succeed he is going to need all his famed skills as a negotiator.
Richard Lapper is author of Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro