Editorial

The Significance of Recent Polling

Slightly improving poll numbers for President Jair Bolsonaro is giving the incumbent and his allies confidence that they can seriously compete in this year’s campaign. For much of the past year, virtually every poll has shown Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva with a consistent and sizeable lead. This remains the case, but the gap is diminishing.  In February, according to a poll conducted by Genial/Quaest, Bolsonaro had 24% of the first-round vote compared to 26% in mid-March. Negative perceptions of the current administration also fell two points, from 51% to 49%.

For its part, the Workers’ Party (PT) insisted last week that the race was far from settled and that anti-Bolsonaro forces should resist complacency at all costs. Nevertheless, Bolsonaro’s slight rise in the polls seems to have more to do with the paucity of viable alternative on the center-right. While Bolsonaro gained two points, for example, former judge Sergio Moro lost two points, suggesting—though not indicating with certainty—that Moro voters are moving back towards the president as the judge from Curitiba fails to catch on in the polls. This movement in the conservative camp would indicate that Bolsonaro’s marginal rise is not coming at Lula’s expense. If anything, their positions at the top of the race are stronger than ever.

Lula as frontrunner is taken as a given by all political sectors. The question that remains for the PT, of course, is how to keep him there. For the opponents, the challenge is to shift political dynamics enough to dislodge the former president from first place. One way they will seek to do that is to relitigate the disputes of the most recent PT administration, that of Dilma Rousseff. A recent interview with Bolsonaro’s chief of staff Ciro Nogueira exemplified this tactic, with Nogueira invoking prominent figures from the last PT administration to remind voters of Brazil’s calamitous recent history. In tacit recognition of their opponent’s likely strategy, the PT will not include Dilma in its first television ads. This will almost certainly change as the race goes on, however, since the PT cannot simply ignore Dilma’s government, especially as they campaign on her achievements as part of the party’s legacy. Indeed, Lula’s overwhelming advantage among women voters (a 28% difference between him and Bolsonaro) likely owes something to the fact that the first and only female head of state in Brazilian history belongs to the party he helped create over forty years ago.

Highlights

• SOCIALIST ALCKMIN: Former governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin praised former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) in an event in which he joined the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB). Traditionally aligned with the center-right, Alckmin said that Lula, his former political opponent, "represents democracy itself." Lula has tapped Alckmin to be his vice-presidential running mate in October. He will have the mission of broadening support for Lula’s candidacy. "President Lula is today the one who best reflects and interprets the Brazilian people’s feeling of hope. He represents democracy itself because he is the son of democracy," Alckmin said.

• LULA VS. LAVA JATO: In a ruling this week, the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) ruled that Deltan Dallagnol, the former chief prosecutor of Lava Jato (Car Wash) Operation, must compensate Lula da Silva for “moral damages.” In a 2016 press conference, Dallagnol displayed a graphic with the name of the former president of Brazil at the center of what he presented as a "criminal organization." Dallagnol, who has abandoned his public career as a prosecutor, is running for a Congressional seat in the upcoming elections.

• TWO LESS: The pre-candidates Alessandro Vieira (Citizenship) and Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD), current president of the Federal Senate, announced that they are dropping out of the presidential race. There are now eleven pre-candidates contending for the office.

• BOLSONARO DENOUNCED FOR CORRUPTION: The Federal Prosecutor's Office in Brasília accused President Jair Bolsonaro of illicitly enriching himself by embezzling public money when he was a federal congressperson. Bolsonaro allegedly had people on his payroll who didn’t work for him in an official capacity, but rather transferred their salary to him and dealt with his private affairs. The case involves Walderice Santos da Conceição, who operates a juice bar near Bolsonaro’s summer vacation house. She is also accused of illicit enrichment for having been a paid member of the former congressman’s permanent staff of parliamentary officials even though she has never worked in Brasília.

• RECENT ELECTORAL POLLS: A poll by the DATAFOLHA Institute reports that President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) regained a few points in the presidential race, polling at 26%. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva still leads with 43%. The poll also showed that former judge Sergio Moro (Podemos) is at 8% and former minister Ciro Gomes (PDT) is at 6%, in a technical tie for third place. In all of the projections for the runoff election on October 30, the current president gains an additional eight points, but Lula still wins 55% to 34%, a margin of 21 points. The poll also revealed that Bolsonaro’s rejection has dropped five points, although it remains at a high 55%.

Feature Article

Current Challenges of Brazilian Foreign Policy

by Túlio Ferreira

Gerson Moura, the late Brazilian professor of International Relations, once wrote that the difficulties of correctly evaluating the possibilities of Brazil's performance in the international system have produced both the pretension of greatness and misunderstandings of real opportunities. This is because foreign policy is the result of an interplay between the internal conditions of a given country and external constraints. In order to navigate the international system, states must assess their limits and capabilities. Bad diagnoses presage misadventures. Brazil under Bolsonaro is undergoing such “difficulties” since his government has created one of the most erratic moments in Brazilian foreign policy. Below are some reasons why that is so.

When Jair Messias Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, artists, among others, expressed concerns about Brazilian national and international affairs. Celso Amorim, one of the most experienced diplomats in Brazil, stated that Bolsonaro’s proposals on foreign policy were worrying since it's not a good idea to put all eggs in one basket. Brazil could become isolated. Actually, Bolsonaro’s campaign platform contained little mention of foreign policy. He offered only one page filled with generic ideas focusing principally on one specific theme: ideology, a concept used quite inaccurately. His core criticism was to condemn any act or thought that he labeled as Leftist.  

After his election, that tone continued. In his first speech as president-elect, Bolsonaro reserved some time to comment on the Brazilian Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty), emphasizing his intention to remove “ideology” from Brazil’s foreign policy. In line with what had been said in the campaign, Bolsonaro and his supporters continued to issue diatribes on Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, China, and climate agreements. At the same time, ties were strengthened with the United States, more specifically, with the ideological thinking of then president Donald Trump. 

Thirty months later, Bolsonaro's foreign policy shows signs of disorientation while dismantling some historic principles. Five former foreign ministers were unanimous in condemning the bases of his foreign policy, declaring that it was losing touch with reality. In this short essay, there is not enough space to discuss all of the country’s major foreign policy concerns, since Brazil faces a wide and diverse range of multilateral and bilateral issues. In several of them, Brazil has been experiencing difficulties. The cooling off of relations with the United States after the Biden election, the difficulty with environmental themes, and the defense of a conservative agenda are some of the guiding principles that critics have argued need to be radically changed. Also important is the notable misalignment recently shown between the president and the ministry of foreign affairs in dealing with the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Ernesto Araújo, Bolsonaro’s first foreign minister (2019-2020), advocated for the need to refound the Brazilian nation. For Araújo, the West suffers from a “mysterious evil,” a loss of faith. In his opinion, Trump is the only statesman to understand and defend the “real” values ​​of the West. Thus, global governance is not possible given the difficulties of multilateralism. Pan-nationalism should be defended, and cosmopolitanism repelled. He also declared that he prefers to see the Brazilian foreign policy being condemned by other nations rather than allying itself with the “self-interested cynicism of globalists, the corrupt and semi-corrupt.” And he added that if the country's diplomacy “makes us an international pariah, then let us be that pariah.” All of that said, it seems that Brazil is walking in stride in that direction. The replacement of Araújo by a new and more discreet chancellor does not seem to have radically changed this route.

Those are just small examples of the principles used by the current government’s foreign policy decision makers that are restraining the country from an accurate reading of the international system that, according to John J. Mearsheimer, is experiencing a new multipolar moment. We no longer have a single superpower in command as was the case immediately after the dissolution of Cold War bipolarity. The rise of China and the relative loss of US power pose new challenges for countries such as Brazil that are not at the center of the international system and lack a surplus of power. Not taking these facts into consideration only exacerbates the country's isolation in the world. So, the idea of being part of the West is not a good compass in navigating the current world system.

Reversing the current course implies the recognition of mistakes and a shrewder reading of the internal and external conditions of the current conjuncture. Such will and capabilities do not seem to be present in the current government. Whoever rules Brazil in January 2023 will have huge challenges ahead.

Túlio Ferreira is Professor at Federal University of Paraíba, Member of the Brazilian Association of International Relations and WBO Board Advisor.

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