Jair Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 was not an accident. His candidacy was conceived and grew on fertile ground. Four years later, regardless of today’s outcome, Bolsonarism will survive because, in addition to being a punctual political phenomenon, it is a social reality with roots that catalyzes interests. It has, as the results of the first round demonstrate, real, transversal and territorially balanced support. It is not the flower of a day: more than polarizing, it twitches, because its strategy consists of radicalizing the discourse of the traditional center-right. It dares to attack, with unusual aggressiveness, the consensual foundations of the Brazilian political system without completely altering the monetarist principles of its economic policy.
Bolsonaro is a tightrope walker whose main virtue lies in his sense of smell. He radicalizes because he can: his political project is built on the basis of the crisis of the traditional center-right, which began with the impeachment against former president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and is being finalized, six years later, during this double-round election. Bolsonarism threatens but controls; he is histrionic, but he measures the steps. During the next four years, in Brazil, there will be a more conservative and better organized parliamentary right than ever, which will carry Bolsonaro on the wing if he wins and, if the result is unfavorable, will not tire of putting obstacles in the way of his opponent’s management, former president Lula da Silva.
Lula, for his part, is presenting a more moderate profile this time than on any of the other six occasions on which, since 1989, he was a candidate. He brings together, among others, the center-right that he opposed for decades. His own vice-presidential candidate became his rival in another second round, in 2006. But the country has changed a lot since then: the percentage of evangelicals, for example, has doubled, and today they represent a third of the population. the 214 million Brazilians. And although it is a plural group, if we consider its increasingly conservative evolution and its ability to mobilize, it has become for Bolsonaro a more effective political asset than that of any traditional party.
The security lobby (Army, police forces and even militias) is and has been another of its great supports. According to an official report, Bolsonaro has tripled the number of soldiers holding positions in the Brazilian government. That means that in practice, although never formally, he has governed with the Army. Perhaps for this reason, as in the case of the evangelical churches, he has been as budgetary generous with his military allies as with his parliamentary friends, to whom he has not hesitated to authorize secret games. With those he considers his rivals, however, he has been relentless: the cut to the main Brazilian fund for science will reach 42% by 2023. The same has happened with culture.
Furthermore, these are not the only examples of discretionary uses of power: in fact, at the same time that working conditions —and, therefore, purchasing power— have suffered a considerable deterioration, social assistance has been revised downwards and to the always disturbing rhythm of the political situation. In this context, the unions (decapitalized in the framework of a labor reform that abolished compulsory contributions) have lost their ability to mobilize and, consequently, their importance as a counterweight. What has been carried out in practice over the last six years is a surgical intervention in the political system that has substantially altered the relationship of forces. And that will last.
Bolsonarismo, in fact, no matter what happens this Sunday, will have political continuity because what it is betting on is an erosion, likely to be encouraged from various fronts, of the consensual bases on which the democratic project was woven from the end. of the dictatorship, in 1985. The underlying argument is that such a political system is expensive and its corollary, highly exploited when it was the opposition, is that it has a corrupt background. Dismantling those controversial lines of argument, which fuel scuffles, is not going to be easy because Bolsonarism mobilizes based on discomfort and grows from confrontation. His greatest achievement has been to build a pragmatic political model; more than imported, exportable.
Juan Agullo He is a doctor in Sociology (EHESS, France, 2003) and a professor/researcher at UNILA in Brazil. (@JAgulloF)
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