Political escapism in Brazil

The upset result of last Sunday’s run-off in Brazil, quickly overshadowed by its dramatic sequel of the loser’s flight to Miami, leaves our giant neighbour still looking for an adult in the room, with the possible exception of re-elected President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who at the age of 81 is perhaps far too adult.

Certainly not Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who – once in Florida – proclaimed himself President of Brazil (in the English spelling) despite losing last Sunday by 3.6 percent or 4.4 million votes, twice the differences of his father’s defeat in 2022 – a gap ruling out any possibility of fraud, despite the irregularity of extending voting hours. And not a vindictive Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes, who banned Bolsonaro from leaving the country as a presumed prelude to sending him to jail for having the impertinence to run against Lula (and seek the judge’s impeachment) – the ultra-conservative presidential candidate is not immune from investigation due to campaign funding including online betting links, but then nobody of any importance in Brazil is free from suspicion of financial irregularities (including De Moraes himself), so why single out so rapidly the top opposition figure, blithely ignoring any parliamentary immunity for the Liberal Party senator?

Last Sunday’s run-off could hardly have been more polarised, yet both right and left could end up being the losers. With both Bolsonaro presidential candidates now removed from the scene, the Brazilian centre-right can now start recovering control of that wing of politics. It is significant that both here and there the centre-right has recognised Lula’s triumph – PRO here and re-elected Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas in Brazil – but not President Javier Milei here or the Bolsonaros (unlike their Liberal Party), thus making themselves the key to any interaction. A control enhanced by having a hold on Lula – in Brazil’s new Congress the Partido Trabalhista has just nine of the 81 senators and 70 of the 513 deputies (shades of Milei in 2023) while should the aged President fail in health, his veep is Geraldo Alckmin, the centre-right standard-bearer in 2006.

The question of where do we go from here in the relationship between South America’s two biggest countries had already risen from Lula so unexpectedly more than surviving last Sunday but has now been rendered far more acute by this week’s events. By assisting in Bolsonaro’s escape to the United States via Misiones, Milei has done US President Donald Trump a favour but has made his already abysmal relationship with Lula even more irreversible with this stunt defying Brazilian courts. As from next Tuesday’s midterms in the United States, we will see how much margin Trump has to return the favour – even if he replicates Lula’s survival act, the Donroe Doctrine will have to co-exist with three of the four other G20 economies in the Americas (Brazil, Canada and Mexico) being hostile.

The great escape banished last Sunday’s run-off from news analysis with record speed, exempting pundits and opinion pollsters from having to explain their blunder (also shared by this newspaper). With all the third-party candidates right of centre, the experts calculated that Lula would need to win the first round by about five percent to be immune from those votes going against him in the run-off but he lost by two percent. It was thus Bolsonaro’s election to lose but he lost it. Perhaps opinion polls are inherently doomed to miscall elections in such contexts, or they are simply immune to the mobilisation of a movement through digital means. Prior to the first round Lula was the incumbent ahead in the polls so the question was whether the electorate wanted him to continue as President – ahead of the run-off it was Bolsonaro out in front so the question was whether the citizenry wanted him with the answer in the negative in both rounds. The first round also served as a protest vote while for many the second was a choice between a known and unknown evil with experience and safety first winning out.

Brazil’s decision was a major factor in setting the international context for next October’s general elections here but an even more important prelude comes next Tuesday with the US midterms. If those go according to plan (not that Brazil did), Kirchnerism might draw the conclusion that a global swing to the left is strong enough to permit them to go it alone, thus vacating a strategic middle ground – which will remain vacant if Milei’s re-election drive persists. But if a week is a long time in politics, a year is an eternity.