#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #BRAZIL #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #France, UCL - #Brazil, Analysis of the first round of the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The text that follows aims to capture the first impressions between the end of

the first round of the 2002 elections - for the presidency in this case - and the
arc of alliances that were announced in the seven to ten days following the
announcement. of the second round. For historical purposes only, it should be
recalled that Lula obtained approximately 48.43% of the valid votes and Bolsonaro
43.20%, with a lower average of null and blank votes and abstention which remains
around 20%. ---- A few observations: ---- First of all, you should know that part
of the evangelical electorate does not respond to surveys. To compensate for this
lack of information, it is necessary to have a series of research instruments
including indirect questions and to devote more time to face-to-face interviews.
Then via more expensive surveys, amplified by the fact that there are about ten
research "institutes" and also by the risk of penalties if the result turns out
to be very bad. This threat comes from the head of government Bolsonaro, as well
as from the federal deputy of Parana Ricardo Barros (PP-PR), who was re-elected.

Consequently, it is not only the extreme right that is progressing in a
consolidated way in various social groups, there is also the desire to preach a
system where, in fact, a set of powers is no longer hegemonic. For example, media
groups that do not support the government. What Trump did in the US with CNN and
MSNBC, Bolsonaro did with Globo, which has half of Brazil's audiences. Research
institutes are in the same situation. The Supreme Court ditto.

In this idea of an ideological war that joins the worst of what the country can
do, even with the vexatious exposure of the Bolsonaro government due to the
pandemic, there are approximately 45% of the population of Brazil who support
whatever it is. come the effects of what they perceive to be the government of
tropical Trumpism.

 From there to restore social democracy to power, it will be the reissue of the
barrage during the direct election campaign which took place in the first half of
1984, during the last year of the military dictatorship. The positions of the
other centre-right (MDB, PSDB, PSD) and right-wing (União Brasil) parties will be
added, "riding themselves" of their base and their leaders to seek the most
relevant support according to their personal interests.

Let's analyze Simone Tebet (MDB), third in the elections, supports Lula and
demands a programmatic alliance. The PDT too, reluctantly and as part of party
discipline, Ciro Gomes (4th place) made a video without citing "support" and
without saying who he supports. However, the vice-candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, is
the gateway to a return to the status quo, if he wins at the polls and overcomes
the cybernetic and employer terror that is hitting Brazil.

It is not an alliance with a corrupt oligarch, as in the case of former golpist
president Michel Temer (the one who overthrew Dilma Rousseff in April 2016). Nor
is it a capital-labour alliance as was the case with José de Alencar (owner of
industries, vice-president of Lula in 2002 and 2006).

It is a political alliance that saves democratic liberalism, trying to join the
concept of post-neoliberalism: the control of public finances without removing
the mattress of social protection. This is more interesting than what Bolsonarism
offers, but in terms of the projection of the Brazilian political economy, it
barely passes. In terms of distributive conflict and class antagonism, it is
passable. Without social struggle, only the defense of the republic and its
institutions. Any similarity to the impact of US domestic politics is no coincidence.

Another fact of comparison is with the large neighboring country. Today, in 2022,
this is not, literally, a leftist candidacy. It is very similar to Argentina,
where to win votes on the right (Juntos por el Cambio) Alberto Fernández (Frente
de Todos) had Cristina Kirchner as vice-president and the support of the two
other contenders, Daniel Scioli and Sergio Massa.

The latter who is the de facto power in Argentina after July 2023 (the former
president of the Chamber of Deputies who gained powers as a super minister) who
although he has the Peronist imprint comes from a neoliberal background in Alvaro
Alsogaray's group. Scioli, on the other hand, was very close to Menem in the 90s,
more so than Cristina herself.

For his part, Alberto Fernández was from the Radical Civic Union (UCR), very
close to former President Raúl Alfonsin. In other words, the current "left
Peronism" (which is not left, it is center-left like the Kirchnerist line and
other groupings) which would have a similarity with social democracy will do this
mega merger to restore the dam of direct elections.

It is that since 2015, the Brazilian right has been hegemonically on the far
right. And they play to the limit of what the rules of the liberal democratic
game allow. And since they have radicalism, they continue to tighten the rope,
they continue to tighten the rules. For example, the right to property, in
relation to the right to collective ownership of indigenous and ancestral lands.

The right to life, with the right to self-defense and the right to defense of
property. With the militarization of society, the militarization of politics, the
use of para-police. And with this absorption of the far right that is the broth
of the culture of Trumpism, aligned with Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals or
even the radicalization to the right of traditional Protestant groups.

The underlying issue is to have a society policed to defend property and assets,
but not to stem elite crime. It challenges the de facto powers of this
progressive liberal agenda, in the case of identity mores. And a very absurd
international alignment, without any rigor, when Bolsonaro packs all the shades
of the Latin American center-left, puts them in the same common pot and gives
them some sense. Especially when they can no longer count on the blessing of the
United States.

Trump and Bannon support but the White House and the US Deep State do not. The
gravedigger of the country shamelessly quotes and criticizes, as if it were a
single block, the governments of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela,
Nicaragua and Cuba! Ignorance and misinformation are the size of the bad faith of
its international council or something similar.

As for the run-off campaign, from week one Bolsonaro established an alliance with
re-elected state governors. This is the central question. What is the possible
vote transfer of the governor of the state of Minas Gerais, the ultraliberal
Romeu Zema. Because we thought that Lula would be 10 points ahead in Minas Gerais
(second electoral group in the country) and this is not the case, he is only a
few points ahead.

And that there was a technical tie scheduled for the PT candidate, Fernando
Haddad for the São Paulo state government, but the Social Democrat lost by eight
points to Tarsicio de Freitas, candidate of the extreme right. It is important to
remember that São Paulo has more than 40 million inhabitants and represents 40%
of the national GDP. The polls were therefore very wrong, which increases the
rebellion of the right against science and the media.

We are in a paradoxical moment. Any form of rigor that we were used to as a
country from the slow, gradual and unrestricted opening after the end of the
dictatorship has failed. This alliance of right-wing and center-right oligarchs,
when the worst in the country all agree to play by the rules of the democratic
game and to grant social rights, provided that in the end the condition is
favorable to them, it is finished.

The regressive agenda of Congress has existed since the days of the recently
released Eduardo Cunha, maneuvering the "House of Cunha" into the Chamber of
Deputies trying to escape his cassation trial. Today, the day after having been
cleared of all suspicion, Cunha is on the same stage as the former judge and
former minister of Bolsonaro, Sergio Moro (elected senator of Paraná, in União
Brasil) and the former prosecutor of the "Republic of Curitiba", Deltan Dallagnol
(elected federal deputy of Podemos paranaense).

Finally, we must understand that there is an abstention rate of 20%. This is the
national average. And Bolsonaro, in his stupidity, is a great expert. When he saw
Globo TV campaigning for the youth vote, ages 16 to 18, he realized it was a
left-wing vote pool, he talks about 'youth being rebellious, they want change
fast' , etc. Again, this is the logic of Trumpism. More votes where there is less
spending and commitment to resource mobilization.

The abstention game is the same situation. Soon, it will also reproduce an
American logic, that of the electoral reserve. How did Biden get to the election?
With votes from Georgia. And he won because he had a group of Democrats from the
black African-American section of the Democratic Party - led by former state Rep.
Stacey Abrams - who managed to register nearly a million voters. and voters.

The question is, who has contact with the layers that are abstentionists? The
entire left and centre-left, unlike evangelical Pentecostal circles, have clearly
lost their social integration there and it will be very difficult to reverse the
trend.

On the other hand, the costs of mobilizing the far right are easy, just go to a
motorcycle rally with a full tank, honk your horn, wear a yellow jersey or that
of the Brazilian national team.

It is not a cost of mobilization like that which consists of getting people out
of their homes to go for a walk, to walk twelve hours non-stop with the rain, the
risk of repression, transport problems and of food. In other words, it is not the
logic of the struggle that mobilizes these people, it is another type of logic.

Another maneuver of the last week of September, the behavior of the herd: at the
end of the first round of the elections, we witnessed a "yellow wave of the far
right". If we see the massification of acts on Tweeter, we can see that the
protofascists have won the streets, the takeover of this public space by the left
will be very difficult. Even if social democracy wins at the polls.

Bruno Lima Rocha, political scientist, journalist and professor of international
relations (Institute of Anarchist Theory and History, ITHA)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Analyse-du-premier-tour-des-elections-presidentielles-au-Bresil-de-2022
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