Oct 18 2024 | Nº. 139

Editorial

During a long-requested meeting Wednesday, October 16 with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, several heads of major Brazilian banks expressed support for Finance Minister Fernando Haddad's renewed push to curb public spending through structural reforms to the budget. The bankers emphasized the need for what Luiz Carlos Trabuco Cappi, chairman of Bradesco, called a "fiscal stability plan" to help Brazil regain its investment grade rating. They conveyed that this plan could positively impact interest rates, currency, and stock prices. The discussion focused on the importance of fiscal balance, a priority to which Lula has frequently committed his administration. The overarching message to come out of the meeting was optimistic in tone, reflecting support from the financial sector for Haddad’s fiscal stewardship and the better-than-expected economic results of Lula’s government. Some on the left, however, have signaled they will resist the government’s push to curb spending. Lula thus far has backed Haddad’s efforts to signal fiscal moderation, but this is hardly a settled question among the president’s base.

Following disappointing results for his Workers’ Party (PT) in the first round of municipal elections on October 6, Lula is reportedly contemplating a cabinet reshuffle to shift his government's communication and political strategy in the final two years of his term. The most high-profile race in the second round of voting is in São Paulo, the largest city in the southern hemisphere, where Congressman Guilherme Boulos, Lula’s ally in the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), is behind by double-digits in the polls against incumbent mayor Ricardo Nunes, supported by former president Jair Bolsonaro. Boulos this week has sought to highlight Nunes’ lackluster response to widespread power outages following a storm on October 11. As of this Thursday, October 17, some 90,000 homes in São Paulo remained without electricity. This marks the third major blackout in the city within a year.

Next week, Lula will once again be out of the country, attending the 16th summit of BRICS countries on October 25-26 in Russia. The meeting will focus on expanding membership, problem-solving in development finance, and addressing currency alternatives, reflecting Brazil's desire to strengthen ties within the Global South and assert its role in a shifting geopolitical landscape. Among other priorities, the Lula government is expected to urge Russia and China to support Brazil’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, an important marker of global importance that Lula has long identified as key for Brazil. It remains to be seen whether the currents of international affairs have shifted enough to allow for a breakthrough of that kind for Latin America’s largest nation.

Highlights

• Extradition of fugitives. On October 15, Alexandre de Moraes, the Supreme Court justice responsible for investigations involving crimes against democracy attributed to followers of former President Jair Bolsonaro, ordered the extradition to Brazil of approximately 60 people involved in the failed coup attempt of January 8, 2023, who were fugitives abroad. In total, 208 people are the target of arrest warrants for the attacks committed on the headquarters of the Three Powers in Brasília. Among them is the pro-Bolsonaro influencer Oswaldo Eustáquio, a fugitive in Spain. The far-right coup plotters who fled the country despite the judicial restrictions they were subject to argue that the punishments determined by the Supreme Court because of the failed coup attempt are political persecution, and they are trying to convince the governments of neighboring countries, such as Argentina, of this thesis, in the same way that they went to the US Congress months ago – supported by members of the Republican Party – to sell this same argument.

• Power outage. More than 2.1 million people were without electricity for at least six days in São Paulo. The “blackout” occurred after a storm on October 11, which left four people dead in Brazil’s largest and richest city. The energy supply in São Paulo was privatized in 1998 and the company that took control of this service since 2018 is the Italian company Enel. The power outage has called into question not only the continuity of Enel's contract, but also the jurisdiction of Aneel (the National Electric Energy Agency), which is the federal government agency responsible for monitoring the services provided by the foreign concessionaire at nationally and locally. In addition, the power outage has had political repercussions: the city's mayor, Ricardo Nunes, who is seeking reelection as the mayor of São Paulo in the October 27 run-office election, is trying to shift the blame onto the federal government, which is responsible for Anel. The impact of this event on the municipal elections in São Paulo is still uncertain. Nunes leads by approximately ten percentage points over Guilherme Boulos, the candidate supported by Lula.

• Crime Barricades. Members of criminal gangs in Rio de Janeiro are hijacking public transport buses and using the vehicles to block roads and hinder police operations in the city. Between Wednesday and Thursday, 14 buses were used as barricades. When parked on public roads, empty and without keys, these buses block traffic and prevent the police from accessing and carrying out operations in areas dominated by these criminal groups. According to the transportation companies, more than 130 buses have been hijacked and used as barricades in the last 12 months.

   

• Deforestation. On October 16, the European Council decided to postpone the entry into force of a law that would restrict imports by European Council member of products from deforested areas in countries such as Brazil. The law would come into effect on December 30 of this year. The proposal approved by the Council will only come into force on December 30, 2025 for large companies and on June 30, 2026 for small and medium-sized companies. The final decision regarding the new dates will only be taken by the European Parliament in a vote that has not yet been scheduled.

News from the WBO, Organizations and Social Movements

Event in Washington. The Cipó Platform, Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA) and T20 Brazil will hold the event “Financing a Just World and a Sustainable Planet” on October 22 at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, as an official side event of the Civil Society Forum at the Annual Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The event will take place at 4:30 pm, Washington time; 5:30 pm, Brasília time. More information at the link.

Archiving. Attorney General Paulo Gonet dismissed petition 12,061, filed by Congressman Rui Falcão (Workers’ Party) in February 2021, which led to a decision by Supreme Court Justice Dias Toffoli in February 2024 to investigate Transparency International due to unfounded allegations that the organization had misappropriated public funds from leniency agreements signed by Brazilian authorities. The Attorney General's decision points to a lack of supporting evidence and an absence of concrete facts and minimum elements that indicate the occurrence of criminal practice. More information at the link.

Visit Redesca. The Permanent Mission of Brazil to the Organization of American States (OAS) has informed the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that it accepts the visit to the country of a mission headed by Javier Palumbo, who is the rapporteur for the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural and Environmental Rights (REDESCA) in the context of the reconstruction efforts in Rio Grande do Sul, a region of the country devastated by historic rainfaal. The visit will last one week, starting in Brasília, before moving on to Rio Grande do Sul. The date for the visit is being negotiated between REDESCA and the Brazilian government.

Defense of democracy. On October 17, the Pact for Democracy held the final meeting to develop the “Strong Democracy” agenda. At the meeting, an agenda for protecting democracy was formulated, based on the experience and actions of civil society organizations. The debates were divided into eight pillars: depoliticization and democratization of security forces; citizen education; balance between the powers of the Republic; combating the international network of attacks on democracy; participation of civil society in the federative powers; defense and strengthening of the electoral system; accountability and memory of crimes against democracy; and promotion of public debate.

News about the fellows. Rafael R. Ioris, professor of History and Politics of Latin America at the University of Denver and associate researcher at the WBO, will give a lecture entitled “From Ambivalent Subordination of the Cold War to the Status of an Emerging Power: Brazil's Struggles Towards Global Autonomy” on November 13, as part of the Contemporary History and Other Languages ​​course (Undergraduate Degree in Literature, Culture and Digital Communication) at the IULM in Milan, Italy. More information at the link. On Thursday, October 17, another WBO research associate, David Nemer, who is also an associate professor of Media Studies and director of Latin American Studies at the University of Virginia, held the seminar “Empowering Grassroots Community Journalism to Combat Disinformation” at Columbia University.

Feature Article

Why the Far Right is Gaining Popular Support and Electoral Expression in Brazil

By Flávia Pellegrino*

The results of the first round of the 2024 Brazilian municipal elections, held on October 6, point to a scenario that has been predicted and feared since anti-democratic political forces have intensified their influence in the country over the last decade. The election revealed significant political and electoral traction by the far right and its orbiting camp and was once again the scene of methods characteristic of this side of the political spectrum: systematic disinformation campaigns, political violence, and hostility towards the Brazilian voting system.

The far right continues to be, without a doubt, a growing and mobilizing political force in Brazil. Its rise is among the elements that shape the country's numerous democratic challenges today, although it is not the only one. The roots of the cracks in democracies are deeper, both nationally and internationally.

Here in Brazil, the current process of democratic erosion has been underway for at least a decade. Globally, it can be traced back even further, to 2007, when worldwide indicators on the quality of democracies began to point to the phenomenon of a decline in democratic regimes across the planet.

In its latest report, the V-DEM (Varieties of Democracies) Institute revealed that the level of democracy enjoyed around the world in 2023 returned to 1985 levels. According to the index, 71% of the world's population – 5.7 billion people – live in autocracies, which represents a 48% increase compared to ten years ago. The report also showed that 42 countries are currently undergoing continuous episodes of autocratization; 20 years ago, there were 11. Furthermore, only 18 countries are democratizing, compared to 35 countries 20 years ago.

In the Brazilian case, the driving force behind this phenomenon lies fundamentally in the emergence of a process of complete rejection of national politics, its actors and its institutions, based on an amalgam of widespread indignation that ended up culminating in a kind of challenge to Brazilian democracy itself.

The resounding anti-system sentiment that has been in force in Brazil since 2013 is precisely what gives shape and content to the political cycle we are experiencing today and is the phenomenon that primarily fuels the process of democratic erosion that has marked the country over the last decade. Such anti-system momentum was, therefore, in 2018, the guiding thread that led a majority of the voting population to elect the far-right candidate who best catalyzed and mobilized such dissatisfaction and whose political project aimed precisely at imploding the current system. Jair Bolsonaro, therefore, was not the cause, but rather the symptom of this process of democratic recession and fragility in Brazil.

The social and political dissatisfaction that gives rise to such rejection is absolutely legitimate in a country marked by one of the highest levels of inequality on the planet, where basic rights have never been accessible and effective for a significant portion of the population, where multiple forms of violence prevail throughout the national territory, and where the political system is blatantly flawed in terms of representation. In the absence of more refined formulations, discontent regarding living conditions and quality of life tends to be commonly attributed to the democratic regime itself, causing the urgent and legitimate desire for change to fall directly and dangerously on the democracy that should be providing benefits that have never materialized.

Although the diagnosis of the inadequacy of the delivery of the Brazilian democratic regime is real, the paradoxes of the ways to address it are diverse; the first and most important being the fact that democracies are the types of systems that conceptually, empirically and historically allow for social and political constructions aimed at advancing and guaranteeing the rights and freedoms so desired. The solution would lie in improving and deepening democracy, not in destroying it.

A certain inversion of roles between actors within the political spectrum in this scenario is also notable. Throughout history, it has been the sectors linked to the democratic struggle – and especially the progressive camp – that have always been identified with the movements for transformation, change, or even revolution in the country's political realities. Today, however, in a context in which democracies are under threat and in clear recession, their defenders end up assuming the label of “conservatives,” those who wish to preserve the system, even though they call for and work for structural transformations. After all, preserving, defending, and deepening the democratic structure of a country is not, in any way, defending or condoning the status quo.

Amid the current political-ideological imbroglio, the Brazilian case also brings another important element: the assessment that the far right in the country managed to gain such ground due to the extinction of a truly democratic right. Leaderships and political parties marked by patronage and opportunism, driven mostly by their own interests, legitimize and strengthen the existence, practices, values, and ideas of the far right. This occurs both in the most ordinary political constructions and disputes, as well as in the articulations and negotiations that take place within democratic institutions today, especially in the national legislature.

Autocrats do not destroy a democracy alone. They invariably need allies – especially traditional political leaders with political clout – who will support, legitimize and protect them. That is why, in order for the far right to continue to prosper and carry out its anti-democratic project in Brazil, one of the most important steps is to reconstitute a right-wing camp that is unequivocally and essentially committed to democratic ideals, values ​​and practices, willing to draw a line that effectively isolates what and who poses a risk to democracy.

*Flávia Pellegrino is the Executive Coordinator of the Pact for Democracy, a coalition of more than 200 civil society organizations that, since 2018, has coordinated the efforts of social actors across the ideological spectrum to increase the capacity of civil society to defend and reinvigorate democracy in Brazil.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.