The Risks of Keeping Bolsonaro as President* - 23/06/22

Conrado Hübner Mendes, Mariana Celano de Souza Amaral and

Marina Slhessarenko Barreto

Jair Bolsonaro's election in 2018 ended the longest cycle of democratic stability in Brazil's history, which began with the ratification of the 1988 Constitution. Bolsonaro, who opposes legal abortion and is a supporter of the military dictatorship, had the support of evangelical groups, powerful agribusiness forces, and representatives of the financial sector in his presidential bid. As soon as he took office in 2019, his government confirmed his far-right identity.

This year, on October 2, Brazil will again elect a president. Seeking reelection, Bolsonaro will face former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. But even if Bolsonaro is defeated, deconstructing his legacy will remain the challenge of an entire generation.

When Bolsonaro took power, his security policy, based on police violence and making it easier for civilians to own and carry firearms, was not a surprise. Nor were his attacks on minorities such as LGBT+ groups. The strategies that make up the government's authoritarian agenda, like undermining the competence and credibility of the country’s democratic institutions, are many. But one of them has gained special resonance after two years of the pandemic and more than 656,000 deaths: denialism.

Investing in the fabrication of doubt and denial to destabilize democratic consensus is not a new practice. In Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway show how the US tobacco industry was the forerunner of this tactic in the 1980s. Bolsonaro and his related movements have thrived on undermining the role of science—not just “hard science,” but social science and historiography as well—to generate a widespread lack of trust, including in democratic institutions. 

From his first day in power, Bolsonaro has fueled authoritarian ideas that had been latent in Brazil for decades. His government has celebrated for three years the day of the coup d’état that inaugurated the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-85) and the president himself and his ministers have criticized the work of the National Truth Commission (2012-14).

In doing so, they deny Brazil’s recent history and the country’s long-standing problems. Sergio Camargo, who until March 2022 served as president of the Palmares Foundation, a public institution putatively intended to combat racial discrimination, denied the existence of racism and has said that slaves had a privileged life. Bolsonaro has ignored the religious discrimination suffered by practitioners of African religions by denouncing the alleged "Christophobia" suffered by Christians, who are far from being a religious minority.

The president has also shown his reverence for climate denialism by dismissing the president and coordinator of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), one of the main deforestation monitoring centers in the country, after the publication of alarming data on the pace of deforestation in the Amazon in 2019. To unmask the "environmental psychosis," the Ministry of Defense released funds for the acquisition of a new satellite that would collect other data and the Federal Police accused INPE of generating erroneous information on deforestation in the country.

As a man who resents facts, Bolsonaro has unsurprisingly launched innumerable criticisms and attacks on the press. Four days after his inauguration, for example, Bolsonaro said that "the media invents lies 24 hours a day." Since then, he has called the press a "sewer," "garbage,” and "prostituted journalism."

The pandemic has been especially devastating for Brazilians. Since January 2021, the country has surpassed the mark of 1,000 deaths per million inhabitants due to COVID-19. After Peru, Brazil is the Latin American country where COVID-19 has been most lethal. The health crisis has exposed the different faces of Bolsonaro's policy: denialism is not only about denying phenomena, it also implies affirming others.

In March 2020, Bolsonaro claimed that the virus was nothing more than a "little flu." From the beginning, he refused to enact the restrictive movement measures recommended by health authorities, launching instead an advertising campaign with the slogan "Brazil cannot stop" and attacking state governors who chose to establish social distancing.

Bolsonaro has also openly criticized the efficacy of the vaccines, delaying their distribution and opposing making them mandatory. He vetoed the use of masks in prisons and held that beauty salons would be essential services during the pandemic. Additionally, the federal government failed to produce data on the number of infections and deaths from the disease on several occasions, prompting the press to form a consortium to monitor that data.

Meanwhile, the president, the Ministry of Health, and other federal entities have encouraged the use of drugs without proven efficacy, such as hydroxychloroquine and proxalutamide, to treat the disease. In January 2022, the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Strategic Health Supplies stated that, unlike vaccines, hydroxychloroquine had supposedly demonstrated its effectiveness and safety in controlled and experimental studies. Ten days later, a Technical Note from the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights made a public service available for those who feel discriminated against for being unvaccinated.

Despite this coordinated effort and the political strategy of the federal government, about 74% of Brazilians are fully immunized. This has been thanks to the National Immunization Program, launched in the last three years by thousands of professionals throughout the country.

The accumulation of authoritarian acts in the federal government has met resistance, even in the bureaucratic sphere. But this administration’s work is alive, deep, and corrosive. Although individually their actions may seem uncoordinated and ambivalent, as a whole they leave no room for doubt about a strategy to undermine democratic institutions, as mapped out by the Emergency Agenda of the Center for the Analysis of Freedom and Authoritarianism (LAUT).

The Brazilian electoral process presents a scenario of great risk and uncertainty. Bolsonaro has intensified his rhetoric against electronic ballot boxes and has indicated that there is a possibility he will not recognize an electoral defeat. Many observers have concluded that the possibility of a democratic breakdown with the support of the Armed Forces is a real possibility.

It is also of widespread concern that Bolsonaro might reverse his current disadvantage in the polls and be re-elected. If that occurs, Bolsonaro will not hesitate to use an electoral victory to accelerate his radical strategy of gutting the capacity of the Brazilian State with serious consequences for the social, political, and economic development of the country.

Conrado Hübner Mendes is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of São Paulo and researcher at LAUT (Center for the Analysis of Freedom and Authoritarianism)

Mariana Celano de Souza Amaral is a Master's candidate in the Department of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo, and a researcher at LAUT.

Marina Slhessarenko Barreto is a Master's candidate in the Department of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo, and a researcher at LAUT.

*This article was published in Spanish in the Washington Post