Opponents fear 'wrecking ball' Bolsonaro poses threat to Brazilian democracy

Opponents fear 'wrecking ball' Bolsonaro poses threat to Brazilian democracy
Electorate pins faith in former army captain to offer fresh start after wave of corruption scandals

Joe Leahy in São Paulo and Andres Schipani in Rio de Janeiro
14 HOURS AGO

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For Brazilian businesswoman Shirley Santos, there is no option but to vote for the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro this Sunday in the second round of one of the most contentious elections in recent history for Latin America's largest country. With her luxury goods import company reeling from years of recession, she cannot stomach the idea of the leftist Workers' party, or PT, of Mr Bolsonaro's rival Fernando Haddad, winning a fifth consecutive term. "I don't think Bolsonaro is a candidate who is qualified, I don't think he's going to change the country like some fanatics say, but there is no way we can continue with the PT," she says. Ms Santos is typical of the millions of voters who seem poised to elect Mr Bolsonaro to the presidency on Sunday. If he wins, the former army captain, whose rhetoric invites comparisons with US President Donald Trump and Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, will be taking over a country polarised between left and right and one that desperately needs economic reform to avoid slipping back into crisis.
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The seven-time congressman is known as an apologist for the 1964-85 military dictatorship, for endorsing torture and for making disparaging remarks about homosexuals, women and black people. But the majority of voters do not appear to care about these threats. They want to use him as a wrecking ball to demolish what they see as a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent political establishment, starting with the PT. Many view his less savoury remarks as a refreshing change from the fussy political correctness associated with the left. "He has become a point of convergence for innumerable and diverse points of dissatisfaction with a political system that is rotten to the core," says Daniel Aarão Reis, a professor of contemporary history at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói. Whatever the reasons for his likely victory, observers are divided over whether a Bolsonaro presidency will threaten one of Brazil's most hard-won achievements - its democracy. In style at least, Mr Bolsonaro echoes many of the traits of the populists who have prospered around the world in recent years, from Turkey and Russia to the Philippines.

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He has made a career out of shocking interviewers with provocative remarks. He told one that the former dictatorship's main mistake was not killing more people, and has said that he would shut down Congress the same day if he was elected president. Just last Sunday, he told a rally that the PT, "these red marginals [thugs]", will be "banned from our homeland" and promised that Mr Haddad would be thrown in jail. Francis Fukuyama, the political scientist from Stanford University, has described him as a threat to democracy. Yet such fears are not universally held, with some observers believing the threat is exaggerated. Brazil has independent federal police, public prosecutors and judiciary that can withstand a Bolsonaro presidency, says Chris Garman of political consultancy Eurasia Group. "Brazil has relatively robust institutions," he adds. Born in the interior of São Paulo in 1955 to a modest family, the young Jair Bolsonaro joined the army before entering politics in the late 1980s, changing parties nearly 10 times. In 2014, the mainstream parties became embroiled in Brazil's biggest bribery investigation, Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, which examined the links between the political establishment and big business. As other politicians fell victim to the scandal, Mr Bolsonaro aggressively used social media to fill the political vacuum, courting voters with a mix of social conservatism- he was rebaptised in the Jordan river - and economic liberalism. Today his supporters range from extreme rightwing activists hoping for a rerun of the military dictatorship and businesspeople seeking liberal economic policies to evangelical Christians backing "traditional family values" and others wanting a crackdown on crime. "Jair Bolsonaro is not against women, Jair Bolsonaro is against anarchy, the confusion that these feminists are causing in our Brazil," says Cleuzenir Barbosa, a female candidate who ran unsuccessfully for Mr Bolsonaro's Social Liberal party for a seat in the Minas Gerais state legislature.

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Save to myFT Joe Leahy in São Paulo and Andres Schipani in Rio de Janeiro 14 HOURS AGO Print this page88 For Brazilian businesswoman Shirley Santos, there is no option but to vote for the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro this Sunday in the second round of one of the most contentious elections in recent history for Latin America's largest country. With her luxury goods import company reeling from years of recession, she cannot stomach the idea of the leftist Workers' party, or PT, of Mr Bolsonaro's rival Fernando Haddad, winning a fifth consecutive term. "I don't think Bolsonaro is a candidate who is qualified, I don't think he's going to change the country like some fanatics say, but there is no way we can continue with the PT," she says. Ms Santos is typical of the millions of voters who seem poised to elect Mr Bolsonaro to the presidency on Sunday. If he wins, the former army captain, whose rhetoric invites comparisons with US President Donald Trump and Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, will be taking over a country polarised between left and right and one that desperately needs economic reform to avoid slipping back into crisis. Bolsonaro supporters at an election rally in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday © Reuters The seven-time congressman is known as an apologist for the 1964-85 military dictatorship, for endorsing torture and for making disparaging remarks about homosexuals, women and black people. But the majority of voters do not appear to care about these threats. They want to use him as a wrecking ball to demolish what they see as a hopelessly corrupt and incompetent political establishment, starting with the PT. Many view his less savoury remarks as a refreshing change from the fussy political correctness associated with the left. "He has become a point of convergence for innumerable and diverse points of dissatisfaction with a political system that is rotten to the core," says Daniel Aarão Reis, a professor of contemporary history at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niterói. Whatever the reasons for his likely victory, observers are divided over whether a Bolsonaro presidency will threaten one of Brazil's most hard-won achievements - its democracy. In style at least, Mr Bolsonaro echoes many of the traits of the populists who have prospered around the world in recent years, from Turkey and Russia to the Philippines. Recommended The Big Read How social media exposed the fractures in Brazilian democracy He has made a career out of shocking interviewers with provocative remarks. He told one that the former dictatorship's main mistake was not killing more people, and has said that he would shut down Congress the same day if he was elected president. Just last Sunday, he told a rally that the PT, "these red marginals [thugs]", will be "banned from our homeland" and promised that Mr Haddad would be thrown in jail. Francis Fukuyama, the political scientist from Stanford University, has described him as a threat to democracy. Yet such fears are not universally held, with some observers believing the threat is exaggerated. Brazil has independent federal police, public prosecutors and judiciary that can withstand a Bolsonaro presidency, says Chris Garman of political consultancy Eurasia Group. "Brazil has relatively robust institutions," he adds. Born in the interior of São Paulo in 1955 to a modest family, the young Jair Bolsonaro joined the army before entering politics in the late 1980s, changing parties nearly 10 times. In 2014, the mainstream parties became embroiled in Brazil's biggest bribery investigation, Lava Jato, or Operation Car Wash, which examined the links between the political establishment and big business. As other politicians fell victim to the scandal, Mr Bolsonaro aggressively used social media to fill the political vacuum, courting voters with a mix of social conservatism- he was rebaptised in the Jordan river - and economic liberalism. Today his supporters range from extreme rightwing activists hoping for a rerun of the military dictatorship and businesspeople seeking liberal economic policies to evangelical Christians backing "traditional family values" and others wanting a crackdown on crime. "Jair Bolsonaro is not against women, Jair Bolsonaro is against anarchy, the confusion that these feminists are causing in our Brazil," says Cleuzenir Barbosa, a female candidate who ran unsuccessfully for Mr Bolsonaro's Social Liberal party for a seat in the Minas Gerais state legislature. The PT's founder, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in jail since April for corruption, still led Mr Bolsonaro in the polls when the election began in August. But he was replaced by the less charismatic Mr Haddad - a lawyer, economist and professor. Around the same time, Mr Bolsonaro was stabbed while campaigning. The attack brought him near-blanket primetime television coverage. Voters were sympathetic. Mr Bolsonaro registered a convincing victory in the first round with 46 per cent of the vote from his hospital bed compared with 29 per cent for Mr Haddad. He has since conducted his second-round campaign largely from home, refusing to participate in television debates. "How am I going to debate with someone who's . . . a puppet, a dummy," Mr Bolsonaro says dismissively of Mr Haddad.

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Markets have high hopes for the new president. Unlike the PT, which is blamed for destroying the economy under Lula da Silva's successor, Dilma Rousseff, Mr Bolsonaro is seeking to form an economic team made up of technocrats under his adviser, University of Chicago-trained financier Paulo Guedes. If he can get the reforms right, Brazil could be poised for another virtuous cycle, says UBS economist Tony Volpon. The recession that started in 2014 and wiped more than 7 percentage points off Brazil's economy ended in 2016, but the rebound since has been modest. The country grew only 1 per cent in 2017 and a survey conducted by the central bank forecasts growth of only 1.3 per cent this year. "There is a good cyclical story in Brazil because we haven't had a recovery year," says Mr Volpon, adding that global factors such as the US-China trade war had raised concerns, but that funds were still allocating more money to Brazil. Since September, the real has strengthened about 11 per cent against the dollar. "People are finally thinking that maybe next year is the year we get that growth." Mr Guedes has been pushing for an ambitious privatisation programme of 147 major state-owned enterprises to pay down 20 per cent of Brazil's growing public debt. However Mr Bolsonaro, in the past a fierce critic of privatisations, has warned some areas are off limits, such as electricity generation and Petrobras' upstream operations. Mr Guedes wants to simplify Brazil's fiendishly complicated tax system into a single universal tax of 20 per cent and to reduce the primary budget deficit - the gap not including interest payments - to zero by 2020, a challenging target, says Jimena Blanco, head of Latin America research at Verisk Maplecroft.

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The king of the reforms, however, is an overhaul of Brazil's expensive and often unjust pension system, which allows many workers to retire in their early 50s and benefits well-paid public servants. Mr Bolsonaro has said he supports some type of pension reform but has discarded the version already prepared by current president Michel Temer. These reforms will also be difficult to implement. With 30 parties in Congress, Mr Bolsonaro will have to win the two-thirds majority needed to pass an amendment to the constitution such as a pension reform. But some kind of change will be needed relatively quickly, economists argue, or Mr Bolsonaro's honeymoon with the markets could prove shortlived. "If we don't have an important group of reforms that treat the major problems of the country - the imbalance of the public accounts, the closed economy, the low productivity - we will run the risk of the crisis coming back with great velocity," says Marcos Lisboa, president of the Insper business school in São Paulo. Others warn that Mr Bolsonaro might want to use his political capital to deliver first on his social agenda, rather than prioritising economic reform. To satisfy his harder line supporters, he might seek to liberalise gun ownership, ease rules for police in armed confrontations with criminals and lower the age of criminal responsibility for youths. "Bolsonaro will not want to spend all of his political capital on pension reform on day one. People have to be prepared for that and not be disappointed," says UBS's Mr Volpon. For others, however, such concerns are insignificant compared with what they see as Mr Bolsonaro's authoritarian instincts. His proposals to loosen controls on law enforcement officers, for instance, are alarming activists in a country that has among the highest numbers of killings by the police in the world. The overwhelming proportion of the victims are young darker skinned or black men, who in 2015 and 2016 comprised three out of four of those killed by police. "We are already living in Brazil a genocide of the black population," says Adilson Moreira, a Harvard-educated constitutional and human rights professor of law in São Paulo.

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Some believe the ugly rhetoric of the campaign is linked to an increase in politically motivated attacks. Mr Bolsonaro was the most visible victim when he was stabbed by a man claiming God ordered him to do it. While in Bahia, Romualdo Rosário da Costa, a master of capoeira, a traditional martial art, was murdered in an argument over politics. Others wonder what would happen if Mr Bolsonaro came under pressure from Congress or the Supreme Court. His son, Eduardo, who is also a Congressman, caused alarm this week when a video showed him dismissing any attempt by the Supreme Court to block his father's candidacy. "If you want to close the STF [Supreme Court], do you know what you do? Don't send a jeep. Send a soldier and a corporal," he said. Former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said the comments on the Supreme Court "smell of fascism". Mr Bolsonaro immediately moved to counter his son's comments, amid widespread outrage. "Whoever thinks this way needs to consult a psychiatrist," Mr Bolsonaro said. He sent a letter to the Supreme Court to apologise. The role of the military in Mr Bolsonaro's campaign has also unnerved some. He is set to appoint several generals to ministries and his running mate, General Antônio Hamilton Mourão, is also retired from the army. But while the military is taking more of an interest in politics than previously, most analysts see it playing a "supporting" role to provide management expertise to a Bolsonaro presidency rather than intervening more directly in politics. The model would be that of Mr Trump, who has used generals in his administration.

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"I suspect the military itself will be the first to push back on attempts to use them in ways that go beyond their constitutional authority because it ultimately threatens them legally and institutionally," says Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the US Army War College. Some analysts also doubt that Brazil could develop a form of "soft authoritarianism", such as in Turkey. Mr Garman at Eurasia says that the leaders who adopt this approach are normally very popular when elected and receive a boost from a strong economy. They are then able to use that political capital to overcome institutional hurdles to their power. Mr Bolsonaro is expected to come into power with a weak economy and high rejection rates from half the electorate. "Some people consider our democracy to be a kind of banana republic but in fact we are not," says Fernando Schüler, political scientist at Insper. "Our institutions are very strong." Another barrier to a more authoritarian Bolsonaro presidency is that polls show the majority of Brazilians still support democracy. In October, the number who preferred democracy to a dictatorship sprung to a record high of 69 per cent - the highest since the end of the dictatorship, according to pollster Datafolha. Mr Bolsonaro seemed to have perceived this and promised political reform, including surprisingly a proposal to end re-election. Among moderate voters, talk of an end of democracy is not taken seriously. "I don't think he is going to get the constitution and tear it up, I don't think he is crazy and nor would he have the support for that," says Ms Santos, the Bolsonaro voter. But reflecting on the high crime rates, in the same breath, she gives a hint as to why ordinary Brazilians are looking for a change. "I don't even know if we are living in a democracy because we can theoretically do so much but in fact we can't do anything," she says. "We have liberty but we can't walk out on the street. So, I think . . . things can't get any worse than this." Bolsonaro sees votes in picking fight with Beijing During a dinner at Taiwan's foreign ministry earlier this year, Jair Bolsonaro said his trip to Taipei would "demonstrate who we want to get closer to". Such an overture to what China regards as a "renegade province" is not likely to have gone down well in Beijing, which has watched all year as Mr Bolsonaro has fanned distaste for Chinese investments. "China is not buying in Brazil, it is buying Brazil", Mr Bolsonaro has said, repeatedly, of his country's main trading partner and source of foreign investment. An admirer of the US president Donald Trump, the former army captain has embraced an anti-China discourse during this campaign, at the very time that US rhetoric about Beijing has become more aggressive. In a television interview this month, Mr Bolsonaro said Brazil cannot sell state-owned companies "to any capital", referring explicitly to Chinese investments. "The Chinese government understands that anti-China rhetoric can bring votes," says Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. Still, antagonising Beijing, he says, is almost certain to have negative economic consequences. China, for example, is the world's largest consumer of Brazilian soyabeans, and the US-China trade war has been a fillip to Brazilian farmers. Moreover, 38 per cent of sales from Vale, the Brazil-based iron ore producer, are to China. If elected on Sunday, analysts and exporters hope that Mr Bolsonaro adopts a more pragmatic stance before he takes office in January. "That is particularly important given that Beijing's tolerance is far smaller today than only a few years ago," warns Mr Stuenkel. Get alerts on Brazilian politics when a new story is published Get alerts Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2018. All rights reserved.

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