According to Professor Teivo Teivainen, the transition period of the change of power may be difficult. The election winner Lula may have to explain his previous comments about the war in Ukraine.
The right-wing president who lost the Brazilian presidential election With Jair Bolsonaro there are no proper conditions to dispute the election result, even a left-wing one Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva the victory was narrow. This is the opinion of a world politics professor familiar with Latin America Teivo Teivainen from the University of Helsinki.
In the past, Bolsonaro has even been rumored to rely on the help of the armed forces to maintain his position. However, Teivainen reminds that the countries in Brazil’s immediate neighborhood have left-wing governments, and the US administration, due to its own recent past, is sympathetic to the idea of contesting the election result.
– In other words, those soldiers (in Brazil) are not so stupid that they would get themselves into a position where Brazil would find themselves in a bad international spotlight. I never believed that tanks would take to the streets before, and now I believe it even less, Teivainen estimates.
According to him, the congratulations to Lula from the United States and numerous other countries on the election victory raise the threshold for challenging the election result one by one.
Another fact complicating the contestation of the election result is that the right wing and many of Bolsonaro’s allies actually did quite well in the election, especially in the country’s largest state of Sao Paulo. This can reduce their enthusiasm to question the election result, Teivainen estimates.
The right-wing Congress blocks extensive reforms
Brazil may still face difficult times in the coming months. The change of power determined by the results of the elections held now will only take place at the beginning of January. According to Teivainen, the change of power in Brazil means, among other things, that a large part of the civil servants working in the capital will change.
– Previous changes of power have gone quite well, but now it is predicted that it will be a bit awkward and we may have to resort to the courts, Teivainen says.
Despite Bolsonaro’s defeat, the good success of the rest of the right in the elections means that, for example, the majority of Congress is not in Lula’s possession, and the president therefore has no chance of pushing through any thorough left-wing reform program that would require new legislation.
According to Teivainen, this was not particularly expected in Brazil, the most important thing for Lula’s ideologically quite wide support front was to get rid of Bolsonaro.
– On the other hand, however, Brazil has a presidential-led system, so quite a lot of policy direction can be changed by the government alone, such as in foreign and climate policy, for example, Teivainen says.
Even though Lula, who was also in prison, was eventually acquitted of previous corruption charges, Teivainen does not believe that the skein has been completely forgotten. Another thing that the new president may find in front of him is the attitude towards the war in Ukraine.
In May, Lula gave an interview in which he considered both the presidents of Ukraine and Russia equally guilty of the outbreak of the war, and did not absolve the United States or the EU of responsibility either.
– This dimension was left out quite a bit in the election campaign, but I think it will come to the fore in the coming days, Teivainen predicts.
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