Lula returns?
By Dr Imran Khalid
October 15, 2022
Brazilian voters will have to return to the polls for a presidential runoff as none of the leading candidates managed to muster the required numbers in the first round.
On October 30, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (commonly known as Lula) of the left-wing Workers’ Party (PT) will be face to face with incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro of the conservative Liberal Party (PL) in this intense duel for the coveted post. In a highly polarized and charged political atmosphere in Brazil, where the two finalists are presenting two blatantly divergent visions, the result will certainly test the depth and sustainability of Brazil’s democracy.
Lula garnered 48.4 per cent in the first round – just shy of the majority needed for an outright victory – while Bolsonaro finished with 43.2 per cent of votes, beating opinion polls and fanning hope among his supporters. This result fell short of expectations: all the opinion polls just before the elections were unanimously predicting a convenient victory for Lula in the first round. But this did not happen. Very strangely, from an academic perspective, because of violent and intense pre-poll campaign by Lula and Bolsonaro that even witnessed nasty allegations between the two key contenders in particular, the voter turnout was massively disappointing at 21 per cent, the lowest since 1998 – indicating a simmering dissatisfaction among the Brazilians towards the chaotic politics and withering economy.
Perhaps this low voter turnout was one of the key reasons behind Lula’s inability to secure the required 51 per cent votes to finish the game in the first round. The election result was a major shock for progressive Brazilians who had been rooting for an emphatic defeat of Bolsonaro, a former army captain who has repeatedly attacked the country’s democratic institutions and wrecked Brazil’s international reputation. Brazil is still struggling to recover from the implications of its worst-ever recession, which began in 2014. Still grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic and its fallout, for example increased poverty and an ongoing education crisis, Brazil is on the path of major economic atrophy and socio-political disruption, coupled with unprecedented escalation in violent crimes – including murders, robberies, and kidnappings.
Jair Bolsonaro, who won the 2018 presidential election campaigning as a right-wing, socially conservative nationalist, promised to inhibit crime and corruption and boost economic growth. However, his tenure has turned out to be a major disappointment. Laced with many controversial decisions, including cutting funding for federal education, relaxing gun ownership laws, and weakening LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, Bolsonaro’s stint as an ‘outsider president’ has generated frustration among Brazilians. Being a typical populist politician, he has resorted to all sorts of controversies to expand his vote bank among the politically-not-so-much-aware segments of society. He has been criticized internationally for his mismanagement of indigenous communities and the Amazon Rainforest, as well as for his mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in more than 680,000 deaths in Brazil.
More:
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1000018-lula-returns
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