We should be giving more attention to the presidential elections taking place in Brazil on October 30. This is not just because Brazil, like India, is part of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), a political grouping that seeks to challenge unipolarity. Hence what happens to Brazil’s democracy is of concern to us. Or not even because the future of the Amazon, the last magical natural forest providing huge ecosystem services to the world, is at stake, since the incumbent wants to destroy it and the challenger protect it. And also not because the question of whether Brazil will join forces with the growing leftward trend across Latin America as left-leaning governments have come to power committed to greater social welfare rejecting neo-liberal policies. These, in themselves, are good reasons for more attention. But there are others.
Brazil as a comparison
As we, in our insularity, seek to understand what democracy is doing to India, there is the need to look, in 2022, at another democracy as a comparison. Brazil is a good candidate. Its land area is 2.59 times as big as India. It has a population of 213 million versus India’s 1.34 billion. Its GDP is half of India’s at 1.61 T versus 3.17 T; it has an average income of $7,720 against India’s $2,170. And its unemployment rate of 14.4% compares with India’s 6%. It is a multi-party democracy, has an active print and electronic media, a vibrant civil society, and a social media that plays a powerful role in driving, perhaps determining, election outcomes. Further, Brazil has a large middle class, a highly skilled elite, a huge number of poor people and, finally, a significant diaspora. These facts and features have democratic consequences.
I accidentally stumbled upon the import of the Brazilian elections when, on the morning of October 2, I stepped out of the building in New York where I was staying, and came upon thousands upon thousands of Brazilians, eagerly waiting their turn at the polling station in mid-town Manhattan. They were a raucous lot. They hurled slogans at each other. A tense line of New York policemen stood between them. Two groups of Brazilians, one wearing the red of Lula and the other the yellow of Bolsonaro, were facing off. You could feel the rhythmic samba of their sloganeering. I was sad that as an Indian, I knew so little about the Brazilian elections.
Since we in India are always wanting to reform our electoral system through administrative and legislative innovations, here are some additional features of the Brazilian electoral system that we can consider. Brazil has compulsory voting and dual citizenship — which explains the noisy thousands in New York. Like India, Brazil uses a sophisticated electronic voting machine (EVM) and a biometric system of voter identification. By 2020, 119 million voters had their fingerprints registered. In the last six presidential elections, voter turnout was near 80%. Results are available on the same day. Based on media reports, Brazil, it appears, has an independent electoral management body — the electoral court — that conducts the election; it had publicly and courageously called out President Bolsonaro when during the campaign, he had suggested the likelihood of voter fraud and EVM tampering. An independent electoral management body willing to call out an interfering executive is the bedrock of a democracy. Brazil, it seems, has one.
Again something to note. The first round of elections takes place every four years on the first Sunday of October and, if no candidate gets 50% plus one vote, the run-off, between the top two, is held on October 30. Further, Brazil has a mixed electoral system where, at some levels, it adopts the First Past the Post (FPTP) system and at other levels, a Proportional Representation (PR) system. India, it seems, compares well with Brazil. Or is it the other way around?
Political polarisation
Every commentary of the 2022 Brazilian election begins with the observation that this is a highly polarised election. But other than saying that the two manifestos of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro are fundamentally different, students of democracy today need to recognise that in democracies across the world, such political polarisation is becoming both significant and threatening. Consensus is breaking down. It is as if in every democracy there are now two incommensurable nations with little chance of building an overlapping consensus between them. The divide has become rabidly ideological on not just what constitutes a desirable future but also on the means to get there. It is a choice between market forces versus state intervention; trickle down versus safety net; growth with distribution versus growth resulting in a levelling up, and cultural nationalism versus cosmopolitanism. Data comes to the aid of both sides of the argument.
In Brazil, the incumbent, Mr. Bolsonaro, has even used the language of war. All social welfare schemes are dubbed communist and being communist is a terrible thing. The ideological triumphalism of Wall Street seems to have spread across the world. Latin America, however, is challenging this neo-liberal hegemony. In India too we must re-visit these debates to decolonise our minds. In 1989, Brazil introduced us to the fascinating democratic innovation of ‘participatory budgeting’ through its experiment at Porto Allegre. Soon after in the 1990s, we responded with our own innovation in Kerala of the ‘People’s Campaign for the 9th Plan’. On democratic innovations, with schemes such as Bolsa familia, Brazil is a good comparison.
Consequences for global democracy
There is growing anxiety among democrats that the October 30 election results will be disputed and that the January 6 U.S. slogan of a ‘stolen election’ will be embraced by Mr. Bolsonaro. He has stated that he can be removed only by god, by death, or by a fraudulent election. This threat that ‘peaceful succession’, a given in any democracy, may be at risk is a frightening prospect.
Further, the middle class which, according to democratic theory is supposed to be a bulwark against democratic backsliding, now appears in Brazil to have become its facilitator. The middle class has split in its political partisanship. Sections of it live in discourse silos of the left and right. From the centre of politics, they have now shifted to the extremes, letting public reason get swamped by acute ideology. This can be seen in the results of the first round of elections on October 2 (Mr. Lula, 48.4% of the vote share and Mr. Bolsonaro, 43.2%). The two Ministers occupying the portfolios of Health and Environment respectively in the Bolsonaro government, one responsible for a tragically large number of COVID-19 deaths and the other for the destruction of the Amazon, were both re-elected. In contrast, two LGBT activists and two members from the indigenous community, belonging to vulnerable groups during the Bolsonaro regime, have also been elected. A highly political partisan Brazil, a threatened peaceful succession, an Amazon ecosystem at risk, a promise of a turn to the left or a return to the right are all at stake on October 30.
Which way will Brazil go? And what are the lessons for India?
Peter Ronald deSouza is the D.D. Kosambi Visiting Professor at Goa University. He has recently co-edited the book, ‘Companion to Indian Democracy: Resilience, Fragility and Ambivalence’. The views expressed are personal
