Source: Associated Press
On January 24th, an appellate court in Porto Alegre decided to uphold the controversial conviction of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva for passive corruption and money laundering.
The ruling, although expected, has further shaken up the already uncertain 2018 Brazilian presidential election.
As a result of the decision, Lula is currently ineligible to run for the presidency this cycle, despite having been an early favorite. He lead the polls at 35 percent, more than twice the odds of his next biggest competitor, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
However, Lula’s candidacy could still be approved by an electoral court. Although he faces a 12-year prison sentence, his further options for appeal may allow him to continue running a campaign while his eligibility is determined.
Despite Lula’s still plausible, yet unlikely eligibility, it’s not clear whether he still stands a real chance after the conviction. Brazilians are widely appalled with their government’s corruption, and Lula could be a symbol of the failures of this establishment to the average brasileiro. Lula undeniably has status as a national hero; in fact, the image of a persecuted underdog could mobilize his base. Many believe his trial was unfair. Should 35 percent of the population still believe in him come election day, eligibility is the only barrier to his presidential aspirations.
Source: Scroll.in
Nonetheless, the increased possibility of Lula’s ineligibility or his loss of support in the wake of conviction would both greatly shake up the 2018 election. How does the rest of the panorama look like?
The candidates
If Lula is out of the race, the biggest question is where would the president’s former voters turn towards. The Workers Party (PT) is continuing to back Lula as a candidate, so an alternate PT candidate is not yet in the picture, but a contender may come up in the following months should Lula no longer be viable. Even if a new candidate must be selected, the narrative of Lula’s persecution could be a powerful tool for the PT.
A February poll from Datafolha suggests that some - but not all - of Lula’s supporters would support the center-left, environmentalist candidate Marina Silva, who has been projected to the take the lead with 22 percent of the vote. Yet while Silva’s odds increase greatly, her lead is far slimmer ahead of Jair Bolsonaro’s second place.
Source: US Election Atlas
What happens in the lead up to October will be far more decisive than polls can predict. Speaking at a LAPO panel on November 30, Eurasia Group Latin America Director and GWU Professor Dr. João Augusto de Castro Neves noted that the strongest contenders may not be obvious until March or April. After the pool is narrowed to two candidates on October 7, the dynamic will shift again for the final round on October 28.
This is where contenders currently stand:
Marina Silva
Source: Euronews
Marina Silva has been the third most popular candidate in the last two presidential elections. She was Minister of the Environment under Lula from 2004 until her 2008 resignation over concerns about sustainability in the Amazon. She broke from the PT for her last two runs and will run this cycle with Rede Sustentabilidade, a left-leaning environmentalist party that she founded. Another Lula appointee, former Supreme Court Justice Joaquim Barbosa, has yet to definitively enter the race, but could also benefit from the splitting of the PT vote.
Despite the predictions of polls, Silva’s victory is extraordinarily uncertain.
Silva would be the first black and evangelical president of Brazil, yet she does not dominate support of either demographic. Lula’s success story as Brazil’s first president from a background of poverty was a powerful narrative for drawing support, while Marina has shown a history of losing black voters.
While religion only informs the decisions of two out of ten voters in Brazil, the evangelical bloc has grown in recent years. Silva has struggled to benefit from this support. In 2014, she rescinded her support for gay marriage to appeal to a fractured evangelical base, but in doing so sabotaged her support among progressive and LGBT voters.
As surmised by Dr. Castro Neves, Silva tries and fails to please everyone.
Such a tactic will be difficult at this moment of polarized politics. In order to beat Bolsonaro, she will need to offer a strong alternative vision for Brazil, rather than weakly conciliating different groups.
Jair Bolsonaro
Source: Pragmatismo Politico
Bolsonaro is the man to beat in 2018. A Federal Deputy from Rio de Janeiro, he has risen to national prominence due to his vitriolic attacks on women, blacks, indigenous communities, and LGBT people.
I won’t detail his offenses here (disclaimer: I’ve condemned them before), and they have been well-detailed elsewhere. Brazil-based journalist Glenn Greenwald named Bolsonaro the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world, a pointed exaggeration, but not a truthless one.
Nonetheless, Bolsonaro shows real odds of winning. He has had crucial support among 18-25 years olds and a sizable online presence. He boasts over 5 million Facebook followers, over 2 million more than Marina Silva and Lula.
Virtually all major parties would like to see him lose, which could in fact be a boon for his popularity. His rejection from the established political elite might attract Brazilians who are fed up with their corrupted leadership. A coalition between the establishment could be the ultimate aid for Bolsonaro’s success. While lacking support from the PT, PMDB, or PSDB may have hurt candidates such as Marina Silva in the past, Bolsonaro’s ill favor among established parties adds to his successful outsider image. However if Lula is out the race, Bolsonaro loses the foil against which this image is typically contrasted.
Bolsonaro’s main selling point is his obsessive emphasis on strict law and order. Brazil has an extraordinarily high homicide rate, mostly due to gun violence. A strongman who advocates torture and police brutality has an unfortunate appeal in times of chaos.
But perhaps the majority of Brazilians will pay more attention to his record. In 26 years in Congress, Bolsonaro has only passed two pieces of legislation. He has often admitted he knows little about economics and will delegate such work to his advisors. His admiration for Brazil’s military dictatorship seems to supplant such practical knowledge, exemplified best by a comically embarrassing television interview where a reporter was shocked at his claim of economic success under the dictatorship, which was in fact a period of extreme inflation.
Will such practical failures turn voters away? This remains to be seen. His interview gaff was widely circulated in social media, but Bolsonaro tends to communicate via rallies, a closed circuit for devoted fans.
Geraldo Alckmin and all the other major-party politicians
Source: Epoca
The centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) has tapped former São Paulo mayor Geraldo Alckmin as their potential candidate. Alckmin holds only 8-9 percent of polls with or without Lula in the race, yet should a major establishment party succeed in this election, Alckmin could be the one.
However, according to at least one poll, 59 percent of Brazilians would like a president from outside the three major parties: the PT, the PSDB, and president Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). Lula’s exceptionalism might break this tendency, but the current lack of faith in establishment brought by the revelations of corruption in the last few years will be a serious hindrance to candidates like Alckmin.
Nonetheless, some centrists such as Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles, a potential candidate himself, believe Lula’s ineligibility would depolarize the election and allow for a coalition of established moderates. That would be an extraordinarily hard task to put into effect with the current mood of the nation, being that each major party has its own host of politicians who have faced corruption charges.
Anyone else?
Source: Fair Observer
Unlike in the US, Brazilian candidates do not start running two years before an election. There is ample time for politicians to drop in and out of the race. With each known candidate on such tenuous footing, a newcomer could still have a great shot before October. In fact, 52 percent of Brazilians claimed that only someone who has never been a candidate for any political position can really bring renovation to the current system, a complaint that resonates far across the hemisphere, electing politicians such as Donald Trump in the United States and Jimmy Morales in Guatemala.
2018 will be a consequential year for Brazil. Some Brazilians face outright harm as a result of these decisions, be they political repression, civil violence, or the loss of vital social goods and terrain. Yet simultaneously, the 2018 election offers great hope for change: the possibility for a deeply needed political renovation and restoration, a return to economic progress and social reform.
Perhaps a president alone cannot lead to such redemption, but come October 7, Brazilians will have placed their bets.