POLITICS & HISTORY
How the Brazilian Presidential Election is Testing the Strength of Brazil’s Democracy ARTHUR DIB
Brazil is one of the largest democracies in the world, with a population of 216 million people. However, it could be argued that the recent Presidential elections are putting a significant strain on Brazil’s democratic process. The election saw two political titans, Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, simply known as ‘Lula’, go head-to-head in one of the most important and polarising elections in recent Brazilian history. The election represented a massive clash of ideas. Bolsonaro is a member of the Liberal Party, which is a centre right conservative party, although he is often regarded as a far-right leader. Lula is a member of the left-wing Workers Party, known as PT (Partido dos Trabalhadores). The first round was on October 2nd 2022, where Lula got 48.3% of the votes, and Bolsonaro 43.2%. Neither of the candidates achieved more than 50% of the vote, which is needed in order to win the election. This led
to a second runoff election where Lula won with 50.90% (60,345,999 votes) of the votes, whereas Bolsonaro got 49.10% (58,206,354 votes). It’s safe to say that the results were extremely close. The election is proving to be a strain on Brazil’s democracy for various key reasons. Firstly, it is the divisive nature of the results themselves combined with the huge clash of ideals that was already present. With such a slim margin of votes between them, Brazil has been politically split in two, leading to an extremely politically divided nation, each already strongly ideologically opposed. Bolsonaro’s term has been controversial and divisive in Brazil, so this political split was already brewing prior to the election. When results are this close in a democratic election, discontent is inevitable because virtually half of the nation is unhappy to be ruled by the elected leader. Ideally, democratically elected
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