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Brazil’s Bolsonaro can count on conservative grip over Congress
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Brazil’s far-right frontrunner for
the presidency, Jair Bolsonaro, is practically assured of controlling
Congress if he wins, thanks to powerful groups of conservative deputies
persuaded by his promises to promote families, farms and firearms.
Or, as Brazil’s media have take to calling them, the “BBB” — for “beef,
bullets and the Bible.”
That support transcends traditional parties, which in any case were
weakened in general elections last weekend that also confirmed Bolsonaro as
the presidential favorite ahead of an October 28 run-off against a leftist,
Fernando Haddad.
Bolsonaro scored 46 percent of the vote to Haddad’s 29 percent, and
analysts say he has good odds of taking the presidency in two and a half
weeks.
In Congress, Bolsonaro’s previously insignificant Social Liberal Party saw
its ranks in the lower, 513-seat Chamber of Deputies swell from eight to 52.
It also grabbed its first-ever seats in the 81-member upper house, where it
will have four senators.
Haddad’s Workers Party will still be the biggest party in the lower house,
with 56 seats, down from a previous 61.
In all, around 30 parties are represented in the legislature.
– Bolsonaro ‘tsunami’ –
The pro-Bolsonaro “tsunami,” as observers are calling it, confirmed
Brazilian voters’ hunger to break with business-as-usual politics after a
long series of congressional corruption scandals.
Although Bolsonaro, a former paratrooper, has himself been a deputy for the
past 27 years he deftly sold himself as a political outsider determined to
break the old system.
It helped that the 63-year-old Catholic was one of the rare politicians not
muddied by graft allegations.
His tough-on-crime promises and pledge to revive Brazil’s post-recession
economy through a sell-off of state companies has seduced the better-off
segment of Brazil’s 210 million strong population.
Still, he faces fierce opposition from nearly half the electorate for his
hardline ultraconservatism and worrying admiration of military strongmen.
He has declared torture to be legitimate, waxed nostalgic of Brazil’s 1964-
1985 military dictatorship, minimized rape, denigrated women and criticized
homosexuality.
Haddad bears the burden of blame that many voters assign to the Workers
Party for the country’s worst-ever 2014-2016 recession.
The downturn happened during the presidency of the party’s Dilma Rousseff,
impeached in 2016 for fiddling the government’s books. It followed a boom
during the 2003-2010 reign of her predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, now in prison for corruption.
Since then, Brazil has had a center-left president, Michel Temer, who is
deeply unpopular and did not stand for election.
– Generals in government? –
Whoever wins the presidency will be unable to govern without Congress. The
deputies hold the keys to passing the budget and the reforms promised during
the campaign.
“Bolsonaro will govern with the congressional lobbies. That’s the truth. It
goes beyond the parties,” an influential evangelical pastor, Silas Malafaia,
said in a Facebook video as he sat next to Bolsonaro.
The backing of the conservative deputies was initially behind the scenes,
but came out into the open in the week before the first round, when Bolsonaro
suddenly soared in the polls, so much so that some thought he could win
outright in the first round.
Sylvio Costa, founder of a specialized site called Congresso em Foco, said
they closed ranks around the far-right candidate “out of fear of seeing the
left return to power.”
“We are going to unite to make sure candidates linked to corruption and the
worsening of the economic crisis don’t come get back into power,” a
congressional group representing Brazil’s powerful agrobusiness sector, the
Parliamentary Agricultural Front, said last week.
The leader of the evangelical bloc in congress, Hidekazu Takayama, said
supporting Bolsonaro was a “natural tendency” given the candidate’s
“Christian values for the family.”
The gun lobby also rallied around Bolsonaro. Its leader in Congress,
Arminio Fraga, said on social media he was Bolsonaro’s friend for 36 years
and wanted to “govern with him.”
In Brazil, the president typically doles out ministry portfolios to parties
lending coalition support.
But Bolsonaro has vowed to do the opposite. He wants to drastically cut the
number of ministries and put several retired generals in government, without
regard to parties.
“With the legitimacy he got from his first-round victory, he could try to
govern without trading the ministries,” Costa explained.
“But to get lasting support he will have to maintain a high level of
popularity … and show good economic results.”
BSS/AFP/MRI/2323 HRS