Today, Explained - A win for Lula (and democracy) in Brazil

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro vowed he wouldn’t accept the results of the Brazilian election if he lost. Then he lost. Samantha Pearson, Brazil correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, reports from a country on edge. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, one-time Brazilian president, one-time convictee of corruption, claimed a win in Brazil's presidential race early this morning. Lula's a leftist, and his speech promising a new era of peace, love, and hope was standard lefty fare. But he also suggested the election was a win for democracy and a loss for authoritarianism. That part was aimed at the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, a strongman who is beloved by millions of people for his strongmaniness.

Bolsonaro, in response, said nothing. He's been silent. At another time in history, we might think he's seething before a polite concession. But this is not another time in history. He has always said that he believes that there would have been widespread fraud in the election and that he would not accept the result. That's coming up on Today Explained. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever.

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Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Samantha Pearson covers Brazil for The Wall Street Journal, which means she has been glued to this election from her base in Sao Paulo. It was actually the closest presidential race in Brazilian history. It was a nail-biting few hours while we were waiting for the votes to be counted. But eventually the winner was Lula da Silva, who is the former leftist president in Brazil. He was president from 2003 to 2010. And then he won by a very narrow margin against the incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, on the right. So he will be back in the presidency again for a third time come January the 1st.

Brazil is my cause. People are my cause. And fighting misery is the reason for my cause. So we have a Lula win and perhaps just as significantly a Bolsonaro defeat. Big picture, what does this mean for Brazil? This was a historic election in many ways. It was the first time that a president has actually failed to win re-election. It's very hard not to win a re-election in Brazil. So I think it really shows how much anger there is against the current president. Bolsonaro has not actually spoken since the election result last night. And he has always, you know, for the last few months at least, said that he believes that there would have been widespread fraud in the election and that he would not accept the result.

There was a lot of concern and there still is some concern about, you know, how is he going to respond to this defeat? And would he try and even stage, you know, a military uprising or something? So democracy, I think, is definitely at stake in this election as well. Tell me about Jair Bolsonaro, the man who lost. So Jair Bolsonaro, for most of his young career, he was in the army. He was an ex-army captain. The country was ruled by a military regime from 1964 to 1985. When the regime fell in 1985 and Brazil became a democracy, Bolsonaro entered politics as a staunch far-right conservative,

eventually becoming a congressman for Rio de Janeiro. He was on the fringes of Brazilian politics. He was always very much to the right, especially on social issues, less so on economic issues. But he was that crazy guy that no one speaks to. Bolsonaro is a right-wing ex-military populist who, when in Congress, told a female colleague, I wouldn't rape you, you're not worth it, has said, I would prefer my son to die in an accident than to have him be gay, and loves making finger guns all the time.

And then comes with the economic crisis here in Brazil. Workers' Party President Dilma Rousseff was impeached in August on charges she mishandled government funds. Her former vice president, Michel Temer, took over pledging austerity. Critics say the poor suffer the brunt of the cuts. And people were desperate, desperate for something completely different. They wanted someone who was against everything that they'd seen before. They had this opinion, which is justified, that all politicians in Brazil are corrupt,

so they didn't want anyone from the system. They wanted an anti-establishment figure. Bolsonaro's voters say they're tired of violent crime and corruption in politics, and they blame PT, the left-wing workers' party, who've been in power for over a decade. Who was Bolsonaro's constituency? I mean, if it was such a close election, millions of people wanted this man to win.

Who were they? So a lot of richer Brazilians, middle-class Brazilians like Bolsonaro, a lot of the poor support Lula, because Lula has done a lot more and did a lot when he was president in the past to help poor families by giving social welfare, but also putting a lot of poor kids into university, into college. Also, the urban areas sometimes tend to vote more in favor of, like the cultural elite, I would say, would vote for Lula,

but then farmers would vote for Bolsonaro. So it comes down to social groups rather than necessarily geographical areas, I would think. One of the social groups is Evangelical Christians, right? Yeah, so that's a huge group in Brazil. It's still unclear exactly how many Evangelical Christians there are in Brazil because there hasn't been a census here since 2010. But people, researchers believe that it's probably about one in three Brazilians are now evangelical Christians. Now, that's a radical change for a country that's, you know, home to the biggest Catholic population

still. And it's had, you know, huge changes. It's brought changes socially, economically, politically. Evangelical Christians in Brazil, at least, they tend to be very socially conservative. So from that point of view, they've been big supporters of Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is actually a Catholic, but he keeps that pretty quiet. He's married to an evangelical Christian. He's friendly with all of the powerful evangelical church leaders in Brazil, who throughout this campaign, even against electoral rules, they've been basically calling for votes within churches, you know, telling people that the only godly choice is Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro lost, and if he lost, it has to mean that he messed something up while he was in office. What did he mess up? Well, a few things, and it depends on who you speak to, which of those things matters more. But I would say that the COVID pandemic really is a big issue. And in fact, that's what we're seeing across Latin America. So incumbents are being kicked out of office,

partly as a response to the COVID pandemic. Now, Brazil did a pretty bad job of handling the pandemic here. The death toll was so high. COVID-19 has nearly toppled the country's healthcare system and hospitals are overwhelmed by patients and they are running out of supplies. Bolsonaro was accused of belittling the disease at the beginning. At the very beginning, he said that, oh, COVID is just a little cold and why are people staying at home and try to encourage people to go back to work. He was also criticised for not doing enough to bring vaccines quickly enough to Brazil.

So a lot of people were angry about that. They were also angry about the economic fallout of the pandemic. That wasn't even really Bolsonaro's fault, but that doesn't really matter, you know, because you blame the person that's in charge. And inflation has risen dramatically in Brazil, as it has in other countries. Unemployment peaked about 15% last year. So, and that's really affected a lot of poorer families in Brazil.

About 33 million people now in Brazil just can't afford to eat. So the situation is critical and they blame Bolsonaro and they remember how good things were under Lula. They want to go back to that, kind of the golden years of the past. And tell me about Lula. He clearly capitalized on a situation where things were not going well for the incumbent. Who is he? Lula, he came from a very poor background. He was the seventh son of illiterate farm workers. Lula began training as a metal worker. At 14, he son of illiterate farm workers. Lula began training

as a metal worker. At 14, he got his first job at a warehouse. In 1980, Lula established the Workers' Party, or PT. When he came to power in 2003 for the first time, he was the first person from poverty that ever become Brazil's president. And that was a radical change for Brazilians. He was extremely popular. Even if you don't like him very much, and even if you're on the right, if you sit and listen to him for 10 minutes, I guarantee you that he will laugh or that he will charm you in some way.

He's a great speaker. He's a great negotiator. He also got lucky, to be fair, during his two terms in office in the 2000s. That was when there was a China commodity boom was happening. And that really benefited Brazil because China is the biggest buyer of Brazilian commodities. So there's a lot of cash flowing into Brazil at that point.

And then Lula channeled a lot of that cash into social welfare programs, infrastructure, which created jobs. So he really had a great time in office. Yes, it's still famous for its music and carnival. But today, Brazil is something much more. A nation of 200 million, it's now the world's sixth largest economy, an energy giant with a booming manufacturing sector and growing middle class. He left with an approval rating of more than 80 percent.

Barack Obama at the time even said he was the most popular politician on earth. So things were very, very good for Lula. Then came the car wash corruption scandal, which then eventually landed Lula in jail. The car wash corruption scandal was the biggest corruption scandal in Brazil's history, in Latin America's history and possibly in the world. It was an investigation into a scheme whereby businessmen would basically pay bribes to politicians in order to win contracts, primarily at Petrobras, which is Brazil's big oil company, but also at other state companies. The probe, named after one of the businesses used to launder the kickbacks, shook Brazil to the core. Now, this investigation rolled on for a few years,

and it gradually kind of implicated more senior people, you know, senior business people and politicians. And then eventually Lula. Lula was convicted in 2017 and 2019 of corruption and money laundering. His sentence was then confirmed by higher court, and then he was put in jail in April 2018. All right, so how did a guy who went to jail four and a half years ago end up running for president? So Lula actually only spent 19 months in jail in the end. He was released in November 2019 for a series of very technical reasons

that I would say that most Brazilians don't actually understand. Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, or simply Lula, left prison on Friday surrounded by hundreds of his supporters. You have no idea of the significance for me to be here with you. I, who my whole life talked with the Brazilian people, never thought that today I could be here talking with men and women who during the past 580 days were here saying good morning Lula, good afternoon Lula. Then the Supreme Court ruled again. They annulled his 2017 conviction and another conviction

in 2019 for corruption and money laundering, saying that the cases had been tried in the wrong jurisdiction. Those cases were never retried and the statute of limitations expired on both of them. So Lula will tell everyone that he's innocent. That's not strictly true. He was never found innocent because his cases were never retried. So it's very, very complicated, very Brazilian. And that's basically the reason that he was released from jail in 2019 and then subsequently allowed to run for election this month. One of the candidates, Bolsonaro, had authoritarian tendencies. One of the candidates, Lula, had been to jail for corruption. I imagine that over the course of this campaign, these two

men used these things against each other. Can you tell me what the campaigning was like? dictator. So it was just a horrible choice. In Brazil, voting is obligatory, which makes it even worse. So you can't just kind of like sit at home and try and ignore the whole thing. You've actually got to go out and vote or you pay a fine. And so it was a very much a race kind of based on identity, based on insults. The debates were very ugly at points we were even wondering if they were going to get into a physical fight. There was very little discussion of actual policy of the future of Brazil, which was a shame. The campaign was also full of fake news, as we say, you know, misinformation, rumors. The most ridiculous rumor I heard yesterday, even yesterday, was that the Supreme Court judges had released Lula from jail because Lula knew they were all pedophophiles. So, and these are, these are like intelligent people. This was a teacher who told me this last week,

you know, these are intelligent people who are normally seem reasonable human beings. And then they start telling you about, you know, why they're going to vote. And it's just incredible. I kind of wonder how many people voted yesterday on reasons that weren't in fact really true, which is just disastrous for democracy, right? And a lot of this is down to, you know, rampant use of social media and difficulties really in controlling social media because if you exaggerate and, you know, you keep removing content, then that also brings up issues of free speech.

So it's a really, really complicated time to be a politician, to run a political campaign, for sure. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos.

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. We're back with Samantha Pearson, The Wall Street Journal's woman in Sao Paulo. And Samantha, Jair Bolsonaro still has not spoken after his loss to Lula da Silva, and this has a lot of people very worried. Why is everyone freaking out?

So there is a lot of concern, concern because Bolsonaro has said nothing, literally nothing, since the election last night. There were rumours that he went straight to bed after the result. And it's concerning because Bolsonaro is an authoritarian figure. And he has in the past said many things that would lead you to believe that he would like to stage some kind of, you know, intervention, let's say, in Brazil's democracy. He said in the past that he would like to close some kind of, you know, intervention, let's say, in Brazil's democracy. He said in the past that he would like to close down Congress. And then more recently, he's been questioning the voting process, saying that he doesn't believe that it was a fair vote and that he's not going to

accept the results. And so we are and we have been waiting for this to happen. So for Bolsonaro to come out and say that the results are not fair and that there was fraud. And then the question would be, you know, is he going to get support for that message, mainly from the military, which is a big question mark, because the military, it's very hard to know exactly where they stand on this issue. Obviously, the spokespeople for the military say, no, we support democracy and stuff. But it's very hard to know what really, you know, people inside the military believe and to what lengths they would go to support Bolsonaro.

And also his own supporters, right? I mean, it's been a politically violent, tense campaign. For the last few days, Rio de Janeiro councillor Chico Alencar has been arriving for work in a bulletproof car. The veteran left-winger, a candidate in the federal legislative elections, has taken security measures because he's just received a death threat. There's been a lot of attacks, politically motivated attacks, which is something we haven't seen in Brazil really before. In July, in the

middle of a birthday party, a Workers' Party activist was killed by a pro-Bolsonaro policeman. So there was concern that people would take to the streets and maybe things would get violent, but absolutely nothing has happened so far and that's, it's good, but it's also a little bit terrifying. I mean, I've always kind of thought that these concerns were a little overblown. And in fact, a lot of the Bolsonaro supporters I've spoken to since the result, you know, they're kind of planning their move to Portugal or Miami at this point. They're not reaching for their guns ready to join an uprising. But Bolsonaro hasn't said anything, although some of his allies, in fact,

his strongest allies, you know, conservative allies, have put out statements saying they accept the result and that, you know, now we're going to fight from the side of the opposition and stuff. So I kind of find it hard to believe that Bolsonaro would now come out and say, long live the revolution or something. Do you know what I mean? I find it hard to believe that's going to happen now because he really would seem to be on his own unless he is plotting something with the military. But so far, so good, I think, that he hasn't said very much, but we'll see. One of the big ways that Brazil affects the rest of the world, and one of the big ways that Brazil affects the rest of the world and one of the big ways that the president of Brazil really matters is that whoever is in that office controls to some degree the fate of the Amazon. The Amazon, of course, is one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth.

We all understand it as crucial to the fight against climate change because it holds and is capable of holding so much carbon. We've heard for years now about how under Bolsonaro, the Amazon is being cut down faster than ever. And that has worried a lot of people who want to breathe air. Where does Lula come down on this? During this campaign, this battle has been painted as a fight between good and evil and, you know, Lula being the good and Bolsonaro being the evil on many issues, including the Amazon. And to an extent that is true because, you know, deforestation has risen very sharply under the Bolsonaro administration.

An area nearly the size of Maryland was deforested while he was in office. He's cut funding for enforcement agencies and he's expressed support for ranchers and miners. And that's just created a very dangerous and kind of damaging situation in the Amazon. This government's established a true partnership with environmental crime organizations. Prosecuting officials are being persecuted for enforcing the law and fighting crime, fighting deforestation. And the Lula deforestation declined 70 percent. So, I mean, it is clear that Lula is a better outcome for the Amazon, but he's not perfect. So, for example, one issue that people have been talking about is that Bolsonaro had been planning to pave this massive highway that kind of slices through the Amazon and that

would have then, you know, brought more development to the region and more deforestation. But in fact, Lula has also promised to pave the same road. But I think, you know, the consensus is that Lula would do that with more responsibility. He would take more care to, you know, the consensus is that Lula would do that with more responsibility, he would take more care to, you know, put in protections that this wouldn't lead to, you know, massive deforestation along that strip of land. One interesting point off the back of that is with Lula's election, six of Latin America's largest countries are now led by leftists. Five years ago, many of those countries had right-wing governments.

The pink tide or the turn to the left is a political phenomenon in Latin America. It indicates the rise of left-wing governments focused on social democracy. How do you think this region is changing? What should we be taking away from this? I would argue, I know as of January the 1st, when Nula takes office, all of the major countries in Latin America are going to be run by leftist governments. And that is, that's a huge change, as you say, from recent years. But I would say that this, this round of leftist governments is very different to the leftist, you know, pink tide that we saw in the 2000s, because I feel like that was more ideologically coherent in the sense that these leftist leaders had more in common about the way they were tackling social issues and economic issues. But nowadays, if you actually take these leftist leaders, they have very different opinions. So if you, you know, abortion

or the economy or same-sex marriage and stuff these are very um they actually have quite varied opinions I would say what's happening right now in Latin America is not necessarily a move to the left but I would say that it's a move just to throw out the incumbents partly because of the COVID pandemic and because the region was generally to the right it so happens that the people being elected are now to the left but this is not a move necessarily to the right, it so happens that the people being elected are now to the left. But this is not a move necessarily to the left in Brazil, because there is still a very strong right-wing movement in Brazil. A lot of the people who won elections in Congress this month were right-wing allies of Bolsonaro. So I would say that Lula was more about throwing out the incumbent rather than a move back to the left.

Let me ask you lastly, Samantha, we've been through a refusal to accept the results of an election here in the US. It was a louder refusal, certainly. Do you see any similarities here? I would say Bolsonaro may not see anything now. But, you know, when he has to hand over power in January, you know, what's going to happen then? Maybe there will be some kind of uprising, as we saw in the US. Maybe there will be these violent protests by his supporters. So it's not over yet, I think. I mean, we'll have to see what Bolsonaro says when he does choose to speak. But I would say that that January moment is going to be very, very tense.

And I would say that this issue is kind of not over until he actually hands over the presidential sash to Lula or flings it on the floor in front of him or whatever he's planning to do. But until there's been that transition of power, I don't think we can kind of breathe easy yet. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Amanda Llewellyn. It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by a team led by Laura Bullard. It was engineered by Afim Shapiro. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained.