Brazil has high hopes riding on Lula

The victory of Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva in the Brazilian presidential elections was welcomed by the entire world with a sigh of relief. His election as the president of Brazil defeating the extreme-right incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro will have an impact on the future of Brazil and the entire Latin American region. It was a closely fought election by any count. The percentages bagged by the rivals point to the fact that Lula of the Workers' Party won 50.9 per cent while his rival Bolsonaro won 49.1 per cent. The difference was 21,25,334 votes.

Brazil has never seen an incumbent President getting defeated and it is also a record now. Lula, however, has been the favourite from the very beginning. But, the first round of polls saw him bag only 48.43 per cent of vote, thus making the second run-off imminent as the winning candidate needs at least 50 per cent vote.

For Lula, who has served two terms earlier in 2003 and 2010, this third term is going to be quite tough. Though people were vexed with the government in every sense, there was little they could do with the authoritarian rule of Bolsonaro all these days. The highly divisive government led by President Bolsonaro was merely the symptom of a longer pattern of polarization that had severely hampered the country's response to the pandemic. People could survive the several ills of the government under him but what he did during the pandemic was beyond anyone's capacity.

Bolsonaro promoted a lockdown vs economy concept that did not help the nation much. Then he politicised the choice of the vaccine too in an absurd way. Of course, even in India we faced the situation with some opposition parties arguing against our vaccine programme that turned out to be quite effective in the long term. Brazillian politics itself was polarized as much by the time he became powerful in his position.

It is not that there was no democracy there. In fact, it was seen as a healthy one. However, the trouble that erupted in 2013 over transport fare hikes soon consolidated into a protest against the insufficient social services. This later turned against corruption. The latter political developments were not to the liking of the people as they felt that the system itself was fixed. Brazil today stands out as the best example of how not the Opposition in democracy should behave.

The refusal of the opposition parties in Brazil to adopt a conciliatory approach through the differences and their willingness to undermine the government from the very beginning. All this led to further disillusionment of the people in the systems. Bolsonaro's refusal during his regime to even acknowledge the Corona virus presence in the country was ridiculous. Meanwhile, corruption in permission for vaccine production also dealt a body blow to Brazilian democracy.

Bolsonaro's anti-national, anti-science and anti-climate attitude and his pro-corporate stand led to a large-scale burning of Amazon rain-forest despite widespread opposition from environmentalists and green activists. Big corporates took over the thus burnt lands for agri corporations. It was the right wing penetration alone that kept him going so strong and even in his defeat he remained strong in that sense. The Lula government will face rough weather in implementing the poll promises. But it cannot deviate from the agenda now.