In a run-off election on 28 October 2018, the ex-military arch-conservative Jair Messias Bolsonaro handily beat challenger Fernando Haddad from the socialist Worker’s Party (known as PT in Brazil). He will take office on 1 January 2019. Haddad’s party had also produced previous presidents Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro has promised to liberalise the economy, and to be a “defender of the Constitution, democracy and liberty”. However, he has also promised to uphold “family values”, and has repeatedly made grossly offensive racist, sexist and homophobic remarks, as well as downright terrifying statements in support of military dictatorship, torture and state-sponsored killings. He has widely been denounced as a far-right neo-fascist, and with good reason.
For supporters of free market economics, the trouble is supporting some of his policies, and rejecting others, while trying to see a bigger picture.
Brazil has suffered much in the last 15 years. The economy boomed along with other emerging markets under Lula da Silva, who was president from 2003 to 2011, despite his populist left-wing policies. GDP grew at an average rate of 7% per year. Per capita GDP rose by 5% a year during his two terms of office. Unemployment reduced from 13.7% to 7.8%, and he reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio from 73.9% in his first year to the low 60s for the remainder of his presidency.
Lula was popular both at home and abroad. He left office with an astonishing 87% approval rating. However, his presidency was marred by corruption scandals, ranging from vote-buying in support of legislation, to tender fraud and counterfeit dossiers on opposition politicians. In April 2018, he began serving a 12-year prison sentence for money laundering and receiving bribes.
His successor, Dilma Rousseff, also from the Worker’s Party, popped the Lula economic bubble during her term from 2011 to 2016. After the crash of 2009, Brazil’s GDP growth had recovered to a roaring 7.5% in 2010. Under Roussef, it collapsed to 3.5%.
Growth averaged only 1% during her term, and she left it in the deepest recession in Brazil’s history. Unemployment had returned to 11.3%, inflation had risen from around 6% to 9%, the debt-to-GDP ratio had ballooned to 78.4%, and GDP per capita had declined.
Rousseff was impeached in 2016 on charges of criminal administrative misconduct and disregard for the federal budget. Unlike Lula, she was hugely unpopular, with an approval rating of around 10% and more than 60% of Brazilians supporting her impeachment.
She was also accused of campaign funds violations, as well as responsibility for one of the largest corruption scandals in Brazilian history, in her position as chairman of the board of the state-owned energy company Petrobras between 2003 and 2010. The criminal investigation into this scandal, implicating many politicians and senior civil servants, is ongoing.
Rousseff’s successor, Michel Temer, was a co-accused in her campaign finance trial, although both were acquitted. The economy remained moribund on his watch, with slim GDP growth, rising unemployment, and the debt-GDP ratio rising sharply to 84%.
He was immensely unpopular, with an approval rating of just 7%. He survived two impeachment attempts, one of which was as acting president, but faces multiple investigations and criminal charges over corruption allegations.
While the government was mired in corruption and the economy was down in the dumps, crime rose sharply, fuelled by drug wars and slashed policing budgets. Brazil’s murder rate hit a record high of 30.8 per 100,000 people in 2017. It has the highest murder rate of any large country in the world (>100 million people), and the third-highest of any medium-sized country (>10 million people), after Venezuela and South Africa.
The people were quite right to be angry and demand a radical change. And a radical change they got.
With a middle name meaning “Messiah” and a nickname among supporters of “The Legend”, Bolsonaro promised to take a hard line against left-wing economic policies, against crime, and against corruption. This made him very popular. He became the first presidential candidate in Brazil to raise more than one million reais in public donations for his campaign.
In the lead-up to the election, he was stabbed in the stomach while campaigning. Seriously wounded, he was in hospital for more than three weeks, being released only a week before the general election on 7 October 2018.
His popularity, however, masks some very disturbing political views and statements.
When he voted in favour of Rousseff’s impeachment, Bolsonaro reportedly said:
“For the family and the innocence of children in class that the PT [the Worker’s Party] never had, against communism, for our freedom, against the , for the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dread of Dilma Rousseff, the Army of Caxias, our Armed Forces, for a Brazil above all and for God above all, my vote is yes.”
Ustra is infamous as the head of the Brazilian intelligence, repression and torture unit from 1970 to 1974, under the military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985. Among his torture victims was Rousseff herself. More than 500 people allegedly died at the hands of this unit under his command, and a court officially named him as a torturer in 2008. He died in 2015.
more recent occasion, brandishing a massive machine gun, Bolsonaro proposed to fire upon the opposition to send them to Venezuela, “where they will eat grass”.
His misogyny, racism and homophobia have been on frequent display. He once said his son wouldn’t date a black woman, because he was raised better than that. He also said if his son were gay, he hoped he’d die in an accident. He has said women should be paid less than men because they get pregnant, that a secretary for women’s issues was unsuited for the job because “she was a dyke”, and that he wouldn’t rape a female member of congress because she was too ugly. Despite all this, his support among female voters appeared to be surprisingly high, apparently because security fears trump opposition to misogyny.