The Brazilians did not elect Jair Bolsonaro as President in 2018 because of his agenda, accomplishments or charisma. The voters wanted to punish the Workers Party (PT) of Lula after the sensationalized "Car Wash" corruption scandals. Bolsonaro was carried by the high tide of public anger. Anyone who stood against Fernando Haddad, the PT candidate, would have won.
Bolsonaro does not have any leadership qualities to speak of. In February 2017, when he stood as a candidate for president of the lower house, he won just four votes including his own of the assembly’s 513 deputies. Bolsonaro’s incendiary pro-military views put him at odds with many pro-business and pro-market conservatives. His political ideas were regarded as anachronistic and out of tune with the liberal democratic mood of the post-dictatorship era. His pronouncements on sexuality and violence were so inflammatory and outrageous. “I’ve got five kids but on the fifth I had a moment of weakness and it came out as a girl”, he told an audience at the Clube Hebraica in Sao Paulo in April 2017. His vulgar, obscene and abusive language shocked the cultured and educated class.
Bolsonaro did not sustain membership of any political party nor did he succeed in creating his own party. He had changed parties seven times. When he announced his Presidential candidature in 2016 he was a member of the Social Christian Party. In 2018 he shifted to the Social Liberal Party. He left it in November 2019. His efforts since then to form a new party, the Alliance for Brazil, have not succeeded.
Some overlooked these negatives and voted for Bolsonaro hoping that he might change for the better after becoming President. But he has become worse with even more outrageous behaviour. While the Brazilians are grieving over the 472,000 COVID deaths and suffering from the economic and social impact of the virus, Bolsonaro rides horses, motorcycles and jetskis, smiling, joking and laughing. The death count would have been much less but for his denialism, championing of wrong cures and propaganda against masks, social distancing and vaccines. World leaders practice social and political distancing from the toxic Bolsonaro, who has driven the country into isolation.
While consistently and constantly doing and saying everything negative, Bolsonaro has no positive achievements or fulfilment of major promises or legislative initiatives to show in his term so far. The only positive thing that has happened was the passing of the pension reforms bill in 2019. But this was done by Congress in spite of Bolsonaro’s lack of interest and the open opposition of many of his hardline supporters.
Most Brazilians are ashamed when puzzled foreigners ask how Brazil could elect such an obnoxious character as President. The Brazilians are angry again, outraged more by Bolsonaro’s crimes than the corruption of PT. Going by the logic of anger which defeated PT in the last elections, Bolsonaro should suffer the same fate in the next election in 2022. His role model, Donald Trump, has been voted out in US.
But, even if Bolsonaro loses the 2022 elections, some forces and constituencies which have surfaced or strengthened in this age of Bolsonaro need to be watched out for their long term impact. This is the conclusion of Richard Lapper, former Latin America editor of Financial Times, in his book Bible, Beef and Bullets: Brazil in the age of Bolsonaro.
Lapper is an authentic expert on Latin America and Brazil. He had worked as a journalist in Central America in the early eighties. He has a personal and emotional relationship with Brazil, being married to a Brazilian from Salvador. He had lived in Sao Paulo from 2002 to 2008. With this background, Lapper has given comprehensive background information and an objective analysis of the rise of Bolsonaro and the conservative constituencies.
Lapper characterises Bolsonaro as part of a broader populist phenomenon with the makings of a fascist. He sees him as an extreme right-wing populist, someone similar to leaders such as Donald Trump, Hungarian President Viktor Orban Phillippines leader Rodrigo Duterte.
According to Lapper, three developments have come together to activate the dormant genes of Brazilian right-wing forces , coinciding with the rise of Bolsonaro. First, the country’s recession between 2014 and 2016 was the worst in its modern history (until it was hit even harder COVID). Second, was the "Car Wash" corruption scandal which tarnished the image of all the established political parties and discredited the major corporations. The third was the increase in violent crime, which became the subject of obsessive interest in the press and on social media.
Bolsonaro’s presidential candidature got traction with the rise of a broad conservative alliance of people who had been unhappy about Brazil’s drift towards the socially liberal left. The alliance had already existed in the Congress in the form of the Bible, Bullet and Beef lobbies. These have latched on to Bolsonaro, the first President to share their views even more enthusiastically. No mainstream politician would dare to be openly associated with their agenda, let alone promote their interests as Bolsonaro does.
The Bible lobby represents the growing power of the evangelicals. An estimated 30 per cent of Brazilians were evangelical Protestants in 2020, up from only about 6 per cent in 1980. They are against abortion, liberal education, same-sex marriage and other socially progressive proposals. Bolsonaro’s noise on these issues resonates with the Evangelicals. Many of the Evangelical pastors have become millionaires and Edir Macedo, the founder of Universal Church is a billionaire. They wield power in the media and Congress. They advise their flocks to whom to vote for. Besides the implementation of their obscurantist proposals, they seek a share in political power. Edir Macedo’s nephew Marcelo Crivella became a minister in the Rousseff government. Macedo supported Bolsonaro since his church had issues with Fernando Haddad, the PT candidate.
The Beef lobby includes ruralistas, ranchers, loggers and large landowners who want more freedom to exploit the lands in Amazon and the reservations of indigenous people. Their Congressional caucus has been steadily increasing its strength. It had 192 deputies and 11 senators after the 2010 election in which Rousseff took office. Four years later the lobby increased its weight with 228 deputies and 27 senators. And by 2018 it went up to 243 deputies and 37 senators.
The Bullet lobby consists of police and military officers, both serving and retired as well as their sympathisers which include Bolsonaro. Twenty years earlier, there had been barely any police officers in Brazil’s Congress, but in 2018 more than three dozen won seats. The Bullet lobby is financed by gun companies who want to increase sales. Former police and military officers dominate or run militias in the violence-ridden parts of cities. These are a kind of self-defence forces claiming to protect communities against drug gangs and criminal elements. They do racketeering, extortion and even drug trafficking. They collect illegal monthly taxes from residents and business owners for the protection service. They have a monopoly of sales and distribution of gas and other items at higher rates than the market prices. The residents have no option but to buy only the militia’s products and services. These militias commit crimes and murders with impunity since they have made the security forces accomplices by sharing their collection. The militias have the support of the security forces. They control the voting blocs too. The Bolsonaro family has a deep and longstanding connection to the militias in Rio de Janeiro. Besides protecting and patronizing the militias, the Bolsonaros praise them in public and have even taken initiatives to shower public rewards to them.
Besides helping these three constituencies to become stronger and more powerful, Bolsonaro has added a new constituency in the politics of the country. He has co-opted the military in government at various levels with several hundreds of both serving and retired officers. His cabinet includes several officers of the armed forces. He has let the military officers taste power which they had enjoyed during the time of military dictatorships.
Bolsonaro, the former army captain, has not only militarized the government but has also politicised the armed forces. Chavez had done the same in Venezuela with tragic results. General Eduaro Pazuello appeared in a political rally with Bolsonaro, violating the army conduct rules. Bolsonaro prevailed on the army high command against taking disciplinary action against him. The General was till recently the Health Minister, in which capacity he bungled the covid management by blindly obeying the disastrous line of Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro has always been proud of the military dictatorship and the killings and tortures of leftists openly and unapologetically. He has never hidden his contempt for democracy. During his visit to Chile, he praised the Pinochet dictatorship, causing embarrassment to his Chilean hosts. “Elections won’t change anything in this country”, an angry Bolsonaro told an interviewer on the programme Câmara Aberta, broadcast by TV Band in 1999. “It will only change on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do, killing 30,000 people. If we kill some innocent people, that’s fine, because in every war innocent people die.” Shouting at the interviewer, an intemperate Bolsonaro said that if he became president he would dissolve Congress on his first day in office.
The release of Lula from jail and his announcement of Presidential candidature has given hope for the optimists. Lula is leading in the opinion polls ahead of Bolsonaro. However, one should watch out for the voters from the Bible, Beef and Bullet constituencies, who have received unconditional and proactive support from Bolsonaro. No President has ever done so much to protect and promote their agenda. Even if Bolsonaro becomes a one-term nightmare, those constituencies would continue to be a force, demanding a share in power and narrowing the space for liberal and progressive political leaders in the coming years. The mainstream candidates including Lula have to make compromises to get the votes of the Bible, Beef and Bullet constituencies.
If he loses the 2022 elections, Bolsonaro might try a drama similar to the one staged by Trump and might even try a coup. The Brazilian military might not bring out the tanks for him in this new era of democracy in Latin America. But Bolsonaro and his crazy extremist supporters, with blind belief in bullets, might not give up power easily.
The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.
