Before the voting wraps up in our midterms on November 8th, there is another election worth paying attention to. Brazil is having its presidential run off on Sunday. In the first round on October 2nd, no presidential candidate reached 50 percent of the vote, leading to the top two contenders competing in the runoff. There is the incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro who is a right wing populist in the mold of Donald Trump (also sometimes called the Trump of the Tropics), and his opponent, former two term president Lula Da Silva.
The parallels between Bolsonaro and Trump are striking. If there is any world leader who is a carbon copy of Trump in my opinion, it’s Bolsonaro. Like Trump, he proudly says things that could generously be called politically incorrect and are certainly downright offensive (1). Like Trump, he has praised dictators, fondly reminiscing about the Military Junta that held power in Brazil between 1964-1985, lamenting only that they weren’t brutal enough (2). Like Trump, he did a poor job managing the COVID-19 pandemic. He clashed with state governors who imposed mask mandates, while he wanted to keep things open to help the economy(7). Like Trump, he promoted Hydrochloride as a treatment for Covid, taking it himself when he got the virus(3). The only difference between the two is that Bolsonaro served in elected office before being elected President, serving for almost 30 years in the Brazilian Senate.
Another ominous parallel between Trump and Bolsonaro is that the Brazilian President has not committed to accepting the election results should he lose (6). He is behind Lula in the polls and like Trump, has cast doubt on the election system, saying the electronic voting machines cannot be trusted (5). He even claimed, like Trump did, that his victory in 2018 was rife with fraud (4). Trump has endorsed him for reelection, and I have no doubt that Trump will be advising him to declare victory no matter the results.
It is important to observe what happens should Bolsonaro lose in a few days time. We best hope that parallels between the two populists do not continue after Election Day.
What do people think? Has anyone been paying attention to the Brazilian Election? Does anyone think that there is another leader that is more like Trump than Bolsonaro? Let me know in the comments.
1. https://www.vice.com/…/jair-bolsonaro-elected-president…
2.https://www.theguardian.com/…/homophobic-mismogynist…
3. https://www.france24.com/…/20210505-bolsonaro-insisted…
4. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/…/bolsonaro-fails-to…
5. https://apnews.com/…/jair-bolsonaro-caribbean-voting…
Grodence Paquado 
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