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Barring Bolsonaro from running for office until 2030 can be considered a form of election meddling since it’s meant to influence the outcome of the next elections.
Former Brazilian President Bolsonaro was barred from running for office until 2030 after telling foreign ambassadors last summer before fall’s election that he didn’t trust his country’s electronic voting system. This decision by a panel of judges implies that they and President Lula are scared that Brazilians might re-elect Bolsonaro otherwise they’d have never killed his political future. From this, it can be intuited that they’re not confident that the ruling party will win the next elections.
For whatever one may think about Bolsonaro personally or his presidency, and there are certainly many criticisms that can be leveled against them, he represents the antithesis of Lula and has the support of almost half the country according to the official results of the last election. This represents a critical mass of the population that will now no longer be able to vote for him in a few years’ time had he not been barred from running and decided to do so, which thus disenfranchises them in a sense.
The pretext for doing so is highly questionable, especially in a country whose newly re-elected leftist leader claims that he’s reversing the so-called fascist dictatorship that his predecessor allegedly imposed. After all, Bolsonaro didn’t exploit his distrust of Brazil’s electronic voting system to overturn the official results of the last election, instead peacefully transferring power to his opponent who the Financial Times recently reported had the full support of the US government in his quest to return to office.
Likewise, considering Lula’s ideological alliance with the US’ ruling liberal–globalists who helped him win the last election like that outlet reported citing their unnamed official sources, nobody should expect the US to condemn the decision to bar Bolsonaro from running until 2030. They wanted him out of office so it naturally follows that they’ll at the very least tacitly approve of the panel’s anti-democratic ruling. This suggests that they’re also not confident that the ruling party will win the next elections.
While it’s too early to tell whether Bolsonaro could hypothetically return to office if he was allowed to run, the fact that he was barred in the first place reduces the chances that the opposition will oust Lula since they no longer have anyone around whom they can rally. As was written in the title of this analysis, Lula is scared that Brazilians might re-elect Bolsonaro, which in turn hints that he and his team expect to make unpopular or at the very least very polarizing decisions in the coming future.
It can’t be known for sure, but this might have to do with the increasingly dictatorial policies that they’re relying on in the aftermath of the January 8th events, which includes social media censorship. Far from striking fear in the opposition, this is actually galvanizing them, which could run the risk of Lula or whoever he appoints in his place losing the next elections. With this scenario in mind, it makes sense for them to bar the same man who almost half the country already voted for.
This won’t destroy the opposition, but it’s intended to make it more difficult for them to win the next elections since they’ll now have to choose a new leader to rally around instead of relying on Bolsonaro like they could have otherwise done. For this reason, the panel’s decision can be considered a form of election meddling since it’s meant to influence the outcome of the next elections, which suggests that Lula and his US allies do indeed expect that the ruling party will struggle to retain the presidency.
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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.
