RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 21, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Barring any last-minute upset,
Brazil appears poised to elect Jair Bolsonaro, a populist far-right veteran
politician, as its next president in a week’s time.
His lead seems insurmountable over his leftist rival Fernando Haddad ahead
of the October 28 run-off, with most voters swayed by his anti-corruption
promises — while a minority fears his authoritarian bent and intolerant
views.
In the first round two weeks ago, Bolsonaro handily beat a dozen other
candidates, garnering 46 percent of the vote. Polls since then suggest his
support has climbed to 59 percent, against 41 percent for Haddad.
Much of his appeal lies in his image as a “clean” political outsider who
wants to crack down on rampant crime and stamp out graft in Latin America’s
biggest, most populous nation.
His virulent attacks on Haddad’s Workers Party — widely seen as a corrupt
outfit under now-jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and the
cause of Brazil’s worst-ever recession — have worked to his advantage. So
has the endorsement of many of Brazil’s increasingly influential evangelical
churches.
But opposition to Bolsonaro, while smaller, is fierce and won’t go away.
His record of contentious comments — praising Brazil’s brutal 1964-1985
military dictatorship during which he served as an army captain, calling a
female lawmaker “not worth raping,” justifying torture, and denigrating gay
and black people — have repelled a significant portion of the population.
Demonstrations in Brazil over the weekend both for and against Bolsonaro
highlighted the deep polarization.
Bolsonaro’s profile got a boost when he was stabbed last month by a lone
assailant while campaigning for the first round.
During weeks of convalescence he intensified his already deft use of
social media to speak directly to his millions of followers, largely ducking
interviews with journalists.
That, and his controversial, tough-guy way of talking have added to
comparisons many have made with US President Donald Trump. Others see shades
of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Italian media have called Bolsonaro
“Brazil’s Salvini,” after Italy’s far-right interior minister.
– WhatsApp under scrutiny –
The use of WhatsApp in particular has become a controversial issue in
Brazil, after a report that $3-million contracts had been made with several
companies to bulk-message voters with attacks on the Workers Party.
The app is wildly popular in Brazil, used by more than half of the
population of 210 million.
Haddad, already frustrated by Bolsonaro’s refusal to engage him in
scheduled televised debates, accused his rival of being behind the “illegal”
disinformation campaign, which he said needed to be investigated by electoral
authorities.
Bolsonaro, speaking via Facebook video, denied involvement but said he
wasn’t responsible for what his supporters did.
WhatsApp — owned by Facebook, which is already under scrutiny for
allowing posts meddling with the 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum
in Britain — subsequently closed tens of thousands of accounts, including
one used by one of Bolsonaro’s politician sons.
– Investors place their bets –
Investors, however, are behind Bolsonaro as president, boosting the Sao
Paulo stock market and the Brazilian real on the prospect of him triumphing.
Regardless of the social changes he might bring in, they see him as the
better bet to shake up Brazil’s protectionist, sluggish economy.
Much of that stems from Bolsonaro’s advisor and pick to be his economy
“superminister” in the event of victory: Paulo Guedes, a respected, US-
educated liberal economist who has spoken of privatizing Brazilian state-run
companies and trimming spending to help pay down the country’s big public
debt, and addressing the country’s over-generous pension system.
Yet Bolsonaro in recent days has dampened some of those expectations,
saying the core businesses of oil group Petrobras and electricity enterprise
Eletrobras would stay in government hands, and accusing China of “buying
Brazil.”
Bolsonaro, “seems to be dithering on pension reform and privatization,” a
British consultancy, Capital Economics, said in a briefing note. Also, “there
are signs that Bolsonaro’s previous embrace of fiscal tightening and reform
to Brazil’s welfare system is slipping.”
– ‘Threat’ to democracy? –
Analysts say Bolsonaro is benefiting from a public disgust with mainstream
candidates in Brazil, who are all viewed as self-serving and corrupt.
That has been spurred by fall-out from a sprawling, ongoing corruption
probe known as “Operation Car Wash,” which has mired much of the political
elite — including the popular Lula — in graft scandals largely centered on
bribes, money laundering and illegal financing involving Petrobras.
Deeply unpopular current President Michel Temer did not run in these
elections, and is also under investigation for alleged corruption.
The Workers Party, in power between 2003 and 2016 when the country went
through a dramatic boom than a devastating bust, has felt most of the public
ire, even though the scandals have been spread across parties of all stripes.
The probe “weakened a big part of the corrupt political class, but also
created a vacuum filled by populists,” explained Ivar Hartmann, professor in
public law at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.
Bolsonaro, he said, represented “a threat” to democracy.