Amorim: Bolsonaro is more hardcore fascist than Trump 0:51
(CNN Spanish) – Jair Bolsonaro will seek to renew his presidential mandate for another four years this Sunday in elections that will see him face-to-face with Labor Party (PT) leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for the first time.
After being elected by 55.13% against Fernando Haddad in the second round in October 2018, the former army captain is banking on a new term as head of the Planalto Palace. The current context is characterized by strong political polarization and according to polls, his rival has a lead of around 14 points.
But Bolsonaro, 67, has had a long career in Brazilian politics; Before becoming president, he served as MP for Rio de Janeiro seven times between 1991 and 2018. Throughout these years, he resorted to inflammatory statements, scandal and controversy to set himself apart from his rivals, and even as a stylistic device do things politics.
Now, however, the election will be conducted as a popular vote on his four-year term and his promises for a second term. But what happened in Brazil between 2019 and 2022? Below is a recap of his reign.
Bolsonaro supports Russia’s actions and criticizes Zelenskyy 1:50
Business
When Bolsonaro took office on January 1, 2019, Brazil was suffering from an ongoing economic crisis that worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 – as it experienced an unprecedented fall in its GDP and slipped into recession. According to the World Bank, this decline in GDP reached 4.1% in 2020.
However, in recent months, the Latin American giant has seen a gradual recovery in its economy.
Bolsonaro focused on these achievements in the final leg of his re-election campaign. Before the last session of the UN General Assembly, he declared that poverty, inflation and unemployment were falling and that the Brazilian economy was “in full recovery”.
Brazil: Elections create uncertainty in the economy
In fact, these indices have shown slight declines over the last two or three months, although the overall economic picture is a bit bleaker: one in ten Brazilians is currently unemployed and inflation was 8.73% in August compared to the same month last year.
In the same speech, delivered Sept. 20 from the agency’s New York City headquarters, the conservative president claimed that privatization and deregulation, his administration’s flagship measures, fostered a better business environment in the country. Among the measures that underpinned this orientation, the Economic Freedom Act and the Business Start-up Act stand out.
Coronavirus
The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the biggest challenges facing Jair Bolsonaro’s government from a health, economic and political perspective.
From the start, Bolsonaro downplayed the severity of the virus, which he defined as a minor cold, a “gripezinha,” which he says he wouldn’t worry about if he caught it, even given his “athlete” status in local media. Later, Bolsonaro took part in several protests calling for the end of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of the participants even called for military intervention to shut down Congress and the Supreme Court.
Jair Bolsonaro with a mask on his face
Thus, in May 2021, amid growing social discontent over the impact of the pandemic, the lack of vaccines and the president’s suspicions of corruption, an inquiry into the Brazilian parliament officially began to assess his handling of the pandemic. In October of that year, the investigating commission voted to bring charges against the President, although no progress has been made in this regard.
Datafolha polls from the period showed that 54% of Brazilians supported a lawmaker’s proposal to launch impeachment proceedings against Bolsonaro and that 53% viewed his presidency as “bad” or “appalling”.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Brazil has so far amassed more than 34.6 million cases and about 685,000 deaths, putting it on the podium of countries with the most infections and deaths in the world, along with the United States and India.
Bolsonaro’s diplomacy
In Latin America, one of Bolsonaro’s first foreign policy gestures occurred on February 28, 2019, when he met in Brasilia with Juan Guaidó, leader of the Venezuelan opposition and considered by several governments to be interim president, whom he has supported ever since. In November of the same year, Brazil voted at the United Nations General Assembly along with the United States and Israel against lifting the embargo on Cuba.
Bolsonaro has also spoken several times about what is happening in Nicaragua and questioned Daniel Ortega. This week he even announced that he was “opening” the “doors” of Brazil to religious being persecuted in the Central American country.
At the regional level, Bolsonaro criticized the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), which consists of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela – currently suspended. Indeed, in recent months, the differences expressed by him and Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou have acted as an obstacle to their normal operation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pose during a BRICS meeting during the G20 summit in China in June 2019.
Bolsonaro expressed his intention to make the bloc more flexible and questions its future. At the same time, trade relations between Brazil and Argentina have declined, while China is taking an increasingly important place in the Brazilian economy.
Another sign he gave early in his mandate was the opening of a diplomatic headquarters in Jerusalem, Israel, following steps previously taken by then-US President Donald Trump, whom he considered one of his greatest allies.
Bem vindo to Israel @ernestofaraujoForeign Minister of Brazil and President @jairbolsonaro. Obrigado to open a diplomatic office in Jerusalem! Israel and Brazil are true friends who share common values and we will strengthen cooperation between our two countries. pic.twitter.com/yj2Qavz9NV
— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) March 31, 2019
Contrary to his policies on Mercosur, Bolsonaro has maintained his interest and activity around the BRICS, a bloc initially made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China and later also South Africa, which was attempting to conquer the so-called emerging economies group . Despite the fact that it was founded in 2006 under the presidency of Lula da Silva, the conservative president has maintained uninterrupted relations with his partners and attended the summits – the last one was held in Beijing in June this year.
Even before this meeting and also before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Bolsonaro traveled to Moscow last February. In addition to supporting last-minute peace efforts at the time and signing a number of bilateral agreements, such as sharing classified information, he praised his Russian counterpart, saying, “I understand that President Putin is a person who seeks peace and nobody on the World is interested in a conflict.”
Jair Bolsonaro and Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on February 16, 2022 (Credit: Mikhail Klimentyev / Sputnik / AFP)
After the war began and despite Brazil voting to condemn Russia’s aggression at the United Nations, Bolsonaro avoided speaking directly, saying days before the vote that the country would remain “neutral.”
Brazil, after the rest of the world
Both the handling of the pandemic and Bolsonaro’s environmental policies over the past four years have left him in relative international isolation. During his tenure, destruction of the world’s largest tropical forest has deepened, reaching historic deforestation in the first three months of 2022: an area nearly the size of Dallas, Texas, according to the National Institute of Space Exploration of Brazil (INPE ).
In 2020, amid the wildfires devastating the Amazon, Bolsonaro went so far as to claim that the environmental concerns raised by various governments, local indigenous groups, and non-profit organizations were nothing more than a prelude to a foreign invasion of the Amazon the region. Along the same lines, during the G7 summit in France in August 2019, President Emmanuel Macron announced a fund to help Brazil with the fires, which was rejected by Bolsonaro “as if we were a colony or no man’s land”.
Also, early in his tenure, Bolsonaro announced the cancellation of a trip to New York after reacting to his stance as a first blow to his efforts to strengthen ties with the US. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called him a “dangerous man”. “Your open racism, homophobia and destructive decisions will have a devastating impact on the future of our planet,” he added.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (L) hugs his wife Michelle Bolsonaro during the Liberal Party’s national convention where he was officially nominated for re-election on July 24, 2022 at the Maracanazinho gym in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (MAURO PIMENTEL/ AFP via Getty Images)
During his speech to the United Nations in 2021, Bolsonaro, calmer and keen to build trust, showed he felt that isolation. “(Donald) Trump is gone, (Benjamin) Netanyahu is gone. The main country that’s really aligned with his line of right-wing conservatism is Victor Orban’s Hungary,” Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and vice president for policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, told CNN Time.
In October 2021, the Austrian non-profit organization AllRise asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the Brazilian president over his policies regarding the Amazon, which the complaining lawyers say amount to “crimes against humanity”.
First round of voting
Bolsonaro has expressed doubts about Brazil’s electoral system during his re-election campaign. In particular, the President has groundlessly questioned the transparency of the country’s electronic voting machines, which, paradoxically, are the same system that he himself used to come to power.
This stance can be attributed to the polls giving his rival Lula da Silva an advantage. However, Bolsonaro still has a chance if he makes it to the October 30 election. This only happens if Lula does not get more than 50% of the votes in the first ballot.
According to CNN Brasil, all presidents running for a second term have been re-elected since the instrument was introduced in the country in 1997.
With information from Rodrigo Pedroso, Juliana Koch, Samantha Beech