Analysis. Consider it done. Jair Bolsonaro would have already lost the game. The polls show him in free fall: three Brazilians in five disapprove of his action (15 points more than at the start of the year) and a majority of them are now calling for his dismissal. If the elections were held today, the current head of state would be swept away by the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, given the winner practically in the first round.
Sacred comeback for this indefatigable political phoenix. Until recently, no one dared bet a real on Lula, discredited, humiliated, condemned in court and who spent 580 long days behind bars, between 2018 and 2019. Released, Lula finally saw all his convictions annulled by the Court. supreme in the country last March, thus recovering his political rights. With, in the viewfinder, the presidential election of October 2022.
Already in the campaign without saying it, Lula is working to rally the left and seduce the center, with a clear strategy in mind: to be the “Joe Biden do Brasil”. The former steelworker took Donald Trump’s killer as a model. He dreams of being a great reconstructor of a ruined Brazilian nation, a pacifying, benevolent, unifying, protective “little grandfather of the peoples”. Lula does not hesitate to recall that in 2022 he will be 77 years old, the same age as Joe Biden during his victorious campaign. The world belongs to the septuagenarians …
Confident of himself and of his charisma, the left tribune advances without bothering with any program or specific proposals, contenting himself with invoking the memory of the golden years that were those of his two terms in power (2003-2011), which saw 40 million Brazilians rise out of poverty and the country reach the height of its popularity. “I don’t need to make any promises. I have already made a difference in this country ”, Lula recently confided to the British daily The Guardian.
Frenzied agenda
So would everything already be over? Is the election already folded? The Jair Bolsonaro parenthesis already closed? For many on the left, the current far-right leader would be just an accident in history, quickly beaten and quickly forgotten. The rotten fruit would beg to fall. It is in fact very poor knowledge of contemporary Brazil. And seriously underestimate its president.
Weakened, Bolsonaro is far from being a “lame duck”. The president has lost neither his popular base (around 30% of the electorate) nor his parliamentary base (60 to 70% of the deputies support his action). Despite the controversies, it still has the massive support of military, evangelical and agribusiness elites: the three pillars on which its power rests. Political beast and genius of populist-style digital “com”, Bolsonaro has not lost touch. He still imposes his frenetic agenda in Brazil again and again. The opposition (including Lula) is most often reduced to commenting on its excesses, scandal after scandal. There is no doubt that the troublemaker of Brasilia will be able to take advantage of the 2022 campaign, which promises to be ultra-violent.
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