Lula faces a tough task in uniting a divided Brazil after his election win
The defeat of Jair Bolsonaro has been swiftly recognised by leaders around the world, but the man himself has yet to concede and his supporters say they are ready to take to the streets in protest if called upon. Kim Sengupta reports from Sao Paulo
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Your support makes all the difference.The victory of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the left-wing former president who won Brazil’s momentous election over the hard-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, will have profound repercussions for the country, the region and beyond.
The speed at which world leaders such as Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Rishi Sunak, Justin Trudeau, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi recognised the result illustrates the international focus on the contest – and the importance with which the outcome is being held.
Among those welcoming Lula’s victory are environmental campaigners breathing a sigh of relief that the Amazon rainforest, the “lungs of the planet”, may see an easing of the massive depredation under the Bolsonaro administration. And not before time, with the Cop27 international climate summit starting in Egypt on Sunday.
Figures released by the Brazilian space research agency, Inpe, show deforestation in the Amazon has increased by 64 per cent in 12 months. From January to September this year the area deforested was equivalent to 11 times the size of New York City. This follows the loss of an area larger than Belgium in the first two years of Bolsonaro in power. There has been a sharp rise in mining and logging in the cleared land, enabled by 600 regulatory changes in a year. The rate of deforestation dropped during Lula’s two terms in office between January 2003 and December 2010.
Lula was unable to run in the last presidential election after being convicted of money laundering during an extensive investigation into public corruption and sentenced to nine and half years in prison in 2017. In a series of judgments from 2019 to 2021, the Supreme Court quashed the conviction, releasing him from prison. It ruled that the trial judge had shown bias at the trial and his court did not have jurisdiction in the case.
Lula’s team claim they will halt the pillaging of the rainforest and take action moving forward over the climate crisis. They have been talking to the governments of Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which have also suffered deforestation, about putting forward a plan at Cop27 for an international fund to pay for carbon credits as a way of saving rainforests.
Last year, at Cop26 in Glasgow, Brazil was among a hundred countries which pledged to end deforestation by 2030. Instead, under Mr Bolsonaro, deforestation has significantly speeded up in the country over the last year. Mr Bolsonaro has denied some of the environmental charges made against him. But he has also accused the West of trying to stop Brazil from enriching itself from the Amazon and has previously vowed not to give the country’s Indigenous people “one more square centimetre of land” – enabling their habitat to be used for commercial enterprise.
Pacifying settlers who had benefited from the financial exploitation of the Amazon will be one of the problems faced by Lula, who has promised to try and heal the scars of a divided nation.
A peaceful transfer of power is logically the first step in that process. But on Monday afternoon, 17 hours after the official declaration of the result, Mr Bolsonaro continued to remain silent, refusing to concede defeat. He and his three sons, who have often acted as his attack dogs, are said to be holed up in the presidential palace in Brasilia. Meanwhile, according to local media, the departing president and his wife Michelle unfollowed each other on Instagram within hours of the result being announced.
Ricardo Salles, a former environment minister who once suggested that the Covid-19 pandemic would provide a diversion for environmental deregulation to be introduced, said he recognised the need for change. He tweeted: “The result of the most polarised election in Brazil’s history prompts many reflections and the need to seek ways to pacify a country that is literally split in half. Now is the time for serenity.”
Sergio Moro, the judge who presided over Lula’s trial and then became minister of justice in the Bolsonaro administration, tweeted: “Democracy is like that. The result of an election cannot surpass the duty of responsibility that we have with Brazil. Let's work for the union of those who want the good of the country.”
Mr Bolsnarao, a former army captain, claimed during his campaign that the election may be “stolen” from him. This week, his son Flavio, a senator, declared that his father will be the “victim of the largest electoral fraud ever seen”, echoing the words of Donald Trump who continues to insist he won the US presidential contest in 2020 against Mr Biden.
Mr Bolsonaro, who likes his description of “Trump of the Tropics”, established warm relations with the former US president who sought to intervene on his behalf during the final days of the campaign. Mr Trump urged voters to block Lula who, he charged, was “a radical left lunatic who will quickly destroy your country”.
The narrow margin of Lula’s victory, 50.9 per cent of the vote to Mr Bolsonaro’s 49.1 per cent, has reinforced the views of some of the latter’s hardcore followers that the vote had been rigged – with no evidence to back such claims. They believe that Lula, who they regard as a communist, is out to subvert democracy.
Heitor Machado, a Bolsonaro supporter, fully supported Trump’s views. “Lula is dangerous, he is playing at democracy to get into power. He will try to dismantle all the checks, we will go the way of Venezuela and Cuba, you will see,” he said.
While welcoming Mr Trump’s endorsement for his candidate, Machado, a 39-year-old construction contractor, deplored “interference” by other foreigners.
A group of American actors, including Samuel L Jackson, Robert Downey Jr and Mark Ruffalo, had tweeted their support for Lula while criticising Mr Bolsonaro over Amazon deforestation, as well as denial of the impact of Covid, which contributed to 700,000 Brazilians dying in the pandemic. “True science makes us stronger, please vote on Sunday for brave and open minds and strong and healthy families,” Ruffalo wrote ahead of Sunday's vote. After Lula's win, he tweeted: “Congratulations on your spectacular and undeniable win... Thank you for being a champion of democracy, of the people, the Amazon, and all the living things within.”
Machado demands to know “who are these rich Hollywood stars lecture us? What right have they got to do that? The reasons the North Americans don’t want us to make use of the Amazon is not some holy thing about the environment, it’s because they want to keep South America poor, and so American companies can make money out of us.”
Machado and his friend Carlos Azevedo, also in the construction business, say they will be out on the streets if there is any evidence that the election had been manipulated. Asked whether they would be armed, and if they were aware that Lula supporters are very worried about what may happen, Azevedo responds: “The president [Bolsonaro] made some gun controls easier. This was to enable us to defend ourselves against criminals who had an easy time under Lula. We protect ourselves, we are not going to act in an aggressive way towards anyone. No one needs to be afraid of us: this is just alarm being spread through the media”.
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