After the "ring time depth" election, the battle between left and right in Brazil has become more intense?

Source: Global Times

[Global Times reporter Bai Yunyi, Global Times special correspondent in Brazil Shao Shijun, Global Times special correspondent Li Jing] "Military intervention! On November 2, local time, when supporters of Lula, leader of the Brazilian Workers' Party, were still immersed in the joy of the former president's "return of the king" after the election, tens of thousands of supporters of incumbent President Bolsonaro protested in at least 75 cities in the country, including the capitals of 26 states and the capital Brasilia. They did not recognize the election results, demanded that Bolsonaro remain in power, and even called on the military to take over the government. In recent years, Brazilian society has been deeply divided and polarized, and this year's elections have become a magnifying glass for this issue. In fact, a careful analysis of Brazil's political situation this year shows that the rise to power of left-wing parties does not mean the weakening of right-wing forces. On the contrary, Bolsonaro and his allies won major victories in this year's House of Congress, House of Representatives and local elections, and the situation will make Brazil's future left-right battle even more intense.

"Asaono Dai"

The dust has settled on the election and has not ended Brazil's division. On Tuesday, local time, Bolsonaro did not concede defeat in his first public speech after the election, but authorized other officials to carry out the transfer of power. Bolsonaro supporters, who did not want to recognize the election results, blocked roads across Brazil for days. Police said 146 roads were blocked as of Wednesday. At least seven people were injured at a blockade near the town of Mirasol in São Paulo state, when a driver drove into a crowd of demonstrators. On Wednesday, tens of thousands of protesters, draped in Brazilian flags, gathered outside military bases across the country to demand that the military intervene in the outcome of the election. Others have suggested on social media that the military should take control of the streets and dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court, or hold new elections. For countries that once suffered from military dictatorships, such demands are worrying.

The election exposed deep divisions in Brazil. "As Lula's supporters lit torches and wept with joy, Bolsonaro's supporters were on their knees in prayer in anticipation of a miracle in this election. Agence France-Presse described the different reactions of the two factions after the election results were announced. A poll by pollster, Quaest, shows that Lula and Bolsonaro are expected to win the election in roughly equal numbers. Different political inclinations have caused many Brazilians to clash with friends and colleagues, and political violence has continued to increase. According to statistics, there were 212 cases of political violence in Brazil in the third quarter of this year, an increase of 230% compared with the same period last year.

This division is not only among Brazilians, but also in the country's legislature, central and local governments. While many see the presidential election as a victory for Lula and the Brazilian left, a closer look reveals that it is not so simple. In the second round of voting on October 30, Lula and Bolsonaro received 50.9% and 49.1% of the vote, respectively, the narrowest margin in Brazil's modern history. In addition, in the first round of voting on October 2, Bolsonaro performed much better than expected. Polls previously showed that Bolsonaro would be about 10 percentage points behind Lula in the first round of voting, but the final result was only 5 percentage points behind. Bolsonaro received more than 58 million votes in the second round, 7 million more than in the first round. In terms of vote distribution, Lula's vote bank is mainly concentrated in the economically backward regions of northeast and north, while the economically developed areas of southeast Brazil are the basic plate of Bolsonaro. This shows that differences in geography and economic conditions have led to a polarization of public opinion in Brazil.

On 2 October, with the exception of the first round of the presidential election, all seats in the Brazilian Congress were re-elected in the Chamber of Deputies, one-third of the seats in the Senate, and all governors and state legislatures in the country. Bolsonaro's Liberal Party won 99 seats in the House, 23 more than in 2017, making it the largest party in the House. Together with allies, the right-wing camp represented by Bolsonaro holds 273 of the 513 seats in the House of Representatives. Of the 27 seats re-elected in the Senate, the Liberals won 14 seats, while Lula's Workers' Party won only 8 seats. In addition, in the leadership elections in Brazil's 26 states and the capital, Brasilia, Bolsonaro's supporters won in 13 states, including the top three states of economic power, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. The winner on October 2 also included Pazulo, Brazil's former health minister. His poor response to the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 680,000 people in the country, and that hasn't affected his approval ratings.

An expert on Latin American affairs in China told the Global Times reporter on the 2nd that judging from the results of this congress and local elections, the right-wing conservative forces have been greatly strengthened, and Brazil has presented a basic situation of "big in the future". Brazilian media such as the Folha de São Paulo newspaper and scholars such as Merlot, a professor of political science at São Paulo Insper's University, believe that the election shows that Bolsonaro came to power in 2018 not simply because many people were disgusted with the ruling party and its scandals at the time, but because he had a deep social foundation. The Brazilian president's "Bible, Bullet and Beef" ticket bank, Christian evangelicals, security hardliners and a powerful agribusiness sector, seems more powerful than imagined. There are comments that Bolsonaro has strengthened the Brazilian right, and the Brazilian Congress in 2023 will be more conservative. "Bolsonaro has won the Senate, and we will see him engage in a fierce ideological battle with the left in the coming years." Trauman, a political scientist at the Vargas Foundation, predicted.

2013 and 2016 were a turning point in the split

Bolsonaro's way of governing is widely believed to have exacerbated Brazil's polarization, but before he came to power, the division of Brazilian society had already begun.

Computer scientists and social scientists at the University of São Paulo have been tracking Brazilians on Facebook for years. Their research found that 2013 was a turning point in the polarization of Brazilian society. This year, based on the type of pages visited, the researchers divided Brazilian Facebook users interested in politics into six "communities", including right-wing conservative politicians and parties, left-wing politicians and parties, hardline anti-crime groups, anti-corruption campaigns, progressive social movements, and human rights and environmentalist organizations. While there were clear differences in online behavior between those who followed Brazil's left-wing and right-wing parties in 2013, they overlapped in areas such as those interested in progressive social movements.

However, after the mass protests in Brazil in June 2013, the divide between Facebook's users who supported left-wing and right-wing parties widened significantly, while other "communities" gradually fell apart. The protests began with some popular dissatisfaction with the sharp increase in bus and subway fares in the city, and gradually spread to other areas. About 12% of Brazil's population participated in the march, which became a turning point for Brazilian society. By the end of 2013, politically leaning people had united around corruption, while left-leaning people were focused on social programs and public services.

Between 2014 and 2016, the researchers found that Brazilian Facebook users, who once belonged to six communities, formed two groups that barely intersected: progressive and conservative. In 2016, the impeachment of then-President Rousseff further deepened the rift between political parties and the people. The findings of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a US think tank, are similar to those of scientists at the University of São Paulo, which also argue that the mass protests of 2013 and the impeachment of Rousseff in 2016 were symbolic events that exacerbated the divisions in Brazilian society. Rousseff's impeachment has brought polarization to a climax, not only creating an intractable divide between the Workers' Party and the opposition, but also driving deeper antagonisms between the establishment and the anti-establishment.

Brazilian scholar Stuenker said Rousseff's weak and short second term and the selection of his deputy, Temer, as his successor, deepened many Brazilians' doubts about the willingness of political elites to mend institutional flaws. In 2017, Bolsonaro joined the skeptics. The previously "unknown" right-wing congressman won the 2018 election by positioning himself as the most anti-establishment candidate.

Uneven economic development and the resulting increase in income disparity have also built "walls" among Brazilians. According to AFP, inequality in Brazil weakened during Lula's presidency at the beginning of the 21st century, but in the last 10 years it has exploded intensively between rich and poor, as well as between residents of the South and the North. People in northeastern Brazil earn only half as much as in the southeast, and they are twice as likely to be unemployed. Income inequality is also widening between the sexes and between races. The pandemic has further exacerbated social inequality in Brazil.

Bolsonaro's approach to governance and the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic have made Brazil's deep-seated polarization even more difficult to resolve. Bolsonaro's attacks on mainstream politicians, the media, public health professionals and others have helped him solidify his fundamentals and prompted many of his supporters to become more aggressive in their language, making it increasingly difficult for centrist politicians to find a middle ground on which to reach consensus.

Millions of Brazilians escaped poverty during the commodity boom in the first decade of the 21st century, but in the second decade of this century, the Brazilian economy grew little or even regressed, reversing expectations. In the 2020s, they were more susceptible to radical solutions and populism.

Lula has vowed to govern for all Brazilians

"Brazil's ideological divisions are greater now than at any time in recent history." Rio de Janeiro State University professor Santoro said. Lula will lead a more right-leaning and torn country in 2023 than when he first came to power in 2003. Bloomberg stressed that although Bolsonaro was defeated in the election on October 30, the "right-wing identity politics" he represents still has a large market in Brazil. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a US think tank, quoted experts as saying that the victory of Bolsonaro and his supporters in congressional and local elections may give the current president's supporters a boost and make it more difficult for Lula to govern after taking office.

"Like the United States today, the Brazil that Lula will face when he comes to power is also an extremely divided Brazil, and this rift will be difficult to bridge in a short time." Zhou Zhiwei, a researcher at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times reporter that in fact, the fact that left-wing leaders such as Lula have come to power in Latin America does not mean a major rout of the right-wing. Under the appearance of a "turn to the left", the power of the left and right still maintains an overall balance of power in Brazil and Latin America as a whole.

Another Chinese Latin American affairs expert told the Global Times reporter that based on the current situation in Brazil, after Lula takes office in the future, his governance is bound to be strongly constrained by the right wing, and it is not easy to govern, so he has to move closer to the middle line, win the support of cross-class people with more pragmatic and inclusive policies, strive to build national development consensus, and lead Brazil out of the current predicament. Bloomberg believes that negotiations between Lula's coalition and the party currently supporting Bolsonaro will be key to his agreement in Congress.

In fact, Lula has long been aware of the problem and has tried to expand the coalition as much as possible during the election campaign. To gain broad support, Lula chose his arch-rival and former governor of the state of São Paulo, Akmin, as his running mate. After the first round of voting, he immediately won the support of Tebet and Gomez, the candidates who won the third and fourth places in the first round, and Tebet personally canvassed for Lula. There are now about 10 parties allied with Lula, ranging from the far left to the center-right. It is worth noting that many of the voters who voted for Lula this time are not leftists, and some centrist and center-right people want to end Bolsonaro's term as soon as possible and therefore support Lula.

Recognizing the seriousness of the country's division, Lula vowed in his victory speech to govern for "all 215 million Brazilians" and that "there are no two Brazils: one country, one people, one great nation." In fact, Lula has also tried to promote domestic unity before. When he was first elected president of Brazil in 2002, Lula, a union leader, issued an open letter trying to appease an economic elite panicked by the rise of leftist candidates. This time, he issued a "Pledge to Evangelicals" in an attempt to prevent evangelicals from misunderstanding themselves by Bolsonaro's smears. The PT leader promised that he would not undermine Christian values and would guarantee freedom of belief.