Former judge Sérgio Moro after this Sunday’s vote RODOLFO BUHRER (Portal)
Brazil’s next president will have to rule with a decidedly conservative National Congress. If Lula da Silva is picked in the second round, frankly it will be difficult. Bolsonaro’s formation, the Liberal Party (PL), will have the largest bench in the Chamber of Deputies with 99 seats. The lower house has 513 seats, but it will be almost impossible for Lula’s Labor Party (PT) to form a majority, as among the dozens of parties represented, the majority will be on the fringes, ranging from the center to the extreme…right.
Although the left can score a few points in the area of minority representation (the first trans MPs have been elected and the only indigenous MP so far, Joênia Wapichana, will have several companions), in truth they are an exception to the rule. Congress will continue to be male-majority, white and right-wing.
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Bolsonaro has managed to place many of his own in the legislature. Among the new right-wing representatives, for example, will be former health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an army general whose management of the pandemic has been widely criticized but who has become the most-elected MP in Rio state by nearly 200,000 votes. One of the most elected was former Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, famous for crushing environmental control agencies and promoting illegal logging in the Amazon.
In the Senate, which renewed a third of its seats, Bolsonaro’s party will also have the largest bench with 14 seats out of 81. The president managed to place eight more senators than previously, and the Senate will also be full of former senior state fees. The until-recent vice president, General Antonio Hamilton Mourão, won his seat, as did controversial former family minister Damares Alves (an evangelical pastor known for the phrase “boys wear blue, girls pink”), former agriculture minister Tereza Cristina da Costa, one of the most famous faces of the powerful land lobby, or the former Science Minister Marcos Pontes. The former judge who sentenced Lula and later served as Bolsonaro’s minister, Sérgio Moro, also stepped in. Another central figure in Operation Lava Jato, the biggest wearer on the Brazilian left in recent years, also triumphed Sunday night. Prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol becomes a federal representative. His vote in the state of Paraná was symbolic because he overruled PT President Gleisi Hoffmann.
The right has also swept in the gubernatorial elections. Of the 27 states that Brazil has, only three have already been defined for Lula’s PT this Sunday. Another 11 will be in the hands of the right, not necessarily Bolsonarista. The rest will measure forces in the second round. In São Paulo, the country’s most populous state and economic powerhouse, former Bolsonaro Mines and Energy Minister Tarcísio de Freitas broke election forecasts, overtaking PT member Fernando Haddad, Lula’s dolphin, and the two will see each other on March 30. October again rather gloomy prospects for the left. In Rio de Janeiro there will be no need to vote again: the Bolsonarista Claudio Castro, not noticing the corruption scandals that are fluttering around him, swept the Lula-backed candidate with him and has already been re-elected. The state of Minas Gerais, the second most populous and usually the dominant state, will be back in the hands of Romeu Zema, also a conservative. In 2018 he supported Bolsonaro, although he recently declared himself neutral.
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