Sunday’s election in Brazil could hardly be a clearer-cut choice – nor a closer call. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is neck and neck in the polls with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son and champion of the jailed far-right former president Jair. Mr Bolsonaro senior is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to “annihilate” democracy after losing the last election.
Brazil is Latin America’s largest democracy, but military dictatorship is in its recent past. Mr Bolsonaro wants to free his father and those who rioted in his support in 2023. The senator has campaigned as a less crass and temperamental version of his father, but he is no less extreme. For many on both sides, this is a vote against a man they detest more than an endorsement of their own candidate. Most voters disapprove of both men.
Initially, pundits predicted victory for the leftwing incumbent. Some feel that at 80 he is too old to begin a fourth term, though he remains energetic. His social programmes are extensive, but frustration at Brazil’s enduring failure to match its economic record to its potential may hobble him, especially with growth slowing. Violent crime remains a top issue.
Then came the Banco Master financial scandal, which has snowballed into a corruption case spanning Brazilian politics and the judiciary. First, Flávio Bolsonaro was caught on tape asking the failed bank’s playboy owner, Daniel Vorcaro, for almost $27m to make a film about his father. He denies wrongdoing.
Then compromising messages between Mr Vorcaro and the supreme court judge who led the prosecution of the ex-president were revealed. The allegations fed the perception that politicians are all dirty, and bolstered the unfounded far-right claim that Mr Bolsonaro Sr was stitched up. His son has also papered over a damaging public rift with his stepmother Michelle – an influential figure, key to the evangelical support he needs.
Mr Bolsonaro Jr has said he will abide by the election’s result. But the Bolsonaros have spent years working to undermine trust in internationally respected Brazil’s electronic voting system. A narrow first-round victory for Lula would probably be contested. With other candidates on the right, Mr Bolsonaro Jr would also have an advantage in a second-round vote. He has talked up the prospect of privatisation and cuts to public spending and taxes if he wins. He has pledged to pack the supreme court with anti‑abortion conservative judges, who would also be critical to future election disputes. He has vowed to introduce the kind of aggressive anti-crime drive that has trampled human rights elsewhere.
President Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, will be further emboldened in their “Donroe doctrine” of aggressive intervention in the western hemisphere if Mr Bolsonaro Jr is victorious. US meddling in this election has often backfired – high tariffs on Brazil have allowed Lula to run as the patriot defending the country against foreign interference. But it is no less disturbing.
Mr Trump’s more ruthless and reckless second term also offers an alarming vision of how another Bolsonaro presidency might look. The first showed historic levels of deforestation in the Amazon as well as a surge in illegal resource extraction and the invasion of Indigenous people’s lands. Those fell sharply once Lula returned to power. A Bolsonaro presidency would be bad for women, the poor and minorities. Democracy would probably be its first, local victim. But the climate would surely be another – with consequences for us all.
