By DIOGO FAGUNDES*
The election proved that 2022 had indeed been an exception. Lula only won because he was Lula and because Jair Bolsonaro had committed many atrocities in the midst of the pandemic.
Regarding the second round of municipal elections, some points should be mentioned.
1.
The election proved that 2022 had indeed been an exception. Lula only won because he was Lula and because Jair Bolsonaro had committed many atrocities in the midst of the pandemic. However, upon taking office, the left did not know how to do much to improve the correlation of forces. Two years have passed and the federal government does not seem to have become a major electoral campaigner. Even though parties from the “allied” base (emphasis on the quotation marks), such as the PSD of Kassab, have strengthened, this had nothing to do with the demands of the government or the figure of Lula, unlike in the past.
The Lula who was capable of transferring many votes and even electing lampposts, seen between 2008 and 2012, no longer exists. Elections have their own local dynamics, but it is cynical to ignore the correlation with the national situation while justifying the 2016 failure in São Paulo with the argument that the national scenario had made Fernando Haddad unviable.
Shouldn't we take stock of the last two years? Why hasn't the left been able to use the federal government as a political springboard to reverse the reactionary scenario that has been in vogue since 2015? Doesn't this have something to do with the priority of an agenda that has little to do with the urgent needs of the popular majority?
The fact is: the institutional correlation of forces has worsened. 2026 will be a more difficult battle based on the results of this October.
2.
The tough assessment should not throw Guilherme Boulos to the lions. The problem was not the candidate – was there a better name? – but the political line.
Guilherme Boulos repeated Marcelo Freixo's path: he opted for an almost liquidationist ideological dilution (at the beginning of the campaign he even hid his biography!), losing the authenticity that had originally earned him popularity.
This is a naive version of “realism,” a common sense of politicians when they want to be smart and “mature”: all it takes is a lot of marketing, loss of political clarity, adaptation to more of the same boring stuff, with a lot of cuteness and childishness. The result is that, instead of expanding, it loses the qualities that differentiated it from dullness. As Lacan said: “non-fools make mistakes.”
The truth is that the campaign started off wrong, guided by fear and passivity, in a desperate search to reduce rejection, instead of raising morale and mobilizing his troops – the only way to win would be by creating a great wave of mobilization and hope. He was not successful at all in this task and now Guilherme Boulos will be stigmatized as someone incapable of expanding and winning major positions.
Let us remember that Guilherme Boulos remained exactly the same: he only got 200 thousand votes, the same number as Ricardo Nunes in relation to Bruno Covas. The difference is that in that election, Guilherme Boulos was an unknown name and an underdog, with a campaign lacking money, structure and alliances, while the mayor had a much better and more respectable name (or rather, a surname). So, even though he lost, he achieved a political victory – something like Lula in 1989 on a much smaller scale and with less historical importance.
This time, the mayor was a mediocre and unknown person, full of skeletons in the closet, and Guilherme Boulos had a very expensive campaign (more than 80 million), with the support of big names (Lula, Marta Suplicy) since the first round. Ten times more money to obtain the same results is the definition of failure.
To be honest, even the idea that “it stayed the same” is misleading, because in 2020 Guilherme Boulos had won in the entire backlands of the southern zone, as well as two zones in the far east. This time, he lost everywhere in the outskirts, with two exceptions: Valo Velho and Piraporinha. The “red belt” was gone.
It is also worth highlighting the European levels of disbelief in the electoral process: abstentions won for Guilherme Boulos (2,9 million against 2,3 million). If we add the blank and void votes, we have 42% of people who did not choose any candidate.
3.
Porto Alegre deserves a good study. How could the mayor of the disaster the city has experienced have won so easily? Why did the PT choose Maria do Rosário, a name that is known to be widely rejected? The capital of Rio Grande do Sul had everything it needed to become something similar to the PCI-dominated Bologna, if we transport ourselves to the end of the last century: home of the World Social Forum, the participatory budget, the “PT way of governing”… Where did this legacy end up?
Even in capitals where the left was victorious (Fortaleza), the result was tight and there is a good political balance for disqualified figures from the extreme right. The truth is that the radical right, post-Bolsonaro, has gone through a process of splitting: there is a “pragmatic” wing and another crazy and psychedelic one. We saw this dispute in the second round in Goiânia and Curitiba, as well as in the phenomenon of Pablo Marçal against Tarcísio and Nunes. Far from indicating weakness, this division is a sign of a movement that is strong and consolidated enough to be able to allow its internal disputes to dominate the political landscape.
Other than that, what is promising? The Cirismo movement has finally sunk, the PCdoB has shrunk even further into insignificance, the PSOL also had a negative balance (from five mayoral elections to none, including a major embarrassment in Belém) and there is a lack of new leaders for the post-Lula era. The names that could fill this role (Guilherme Boulos, Flávio Dino, Manuela d'Avila) have all been taken off the field, either due to electoral failure, going to the Supreme Court or abandoning their political careers. With the exception of the good performance of the young and combative Natália Bonavides in Natal, the renewal is very poor, if we compare it with the number of young names on the crazy right.
The only thing that seems to be successful in the field of the government's "broad front" are names that are not exactly left-wing: Eduardo Paes, João Campos, and the reasonable performance of newcomer Tabata Amaral. Even the PT's main campaigner in these elections (the minister from Ceará, Camilo Santana) is not exactly someone known for his left-wing positions. In other words, it is possible that the legacy of Lulism, in a post-Lula situation, will trickle down to figures from a more diffuse "democratic field" with less historical and ideological identity with the Brazilian left. Some assessments of PT bigwigs – such as Quaquá – already seem to point to a bet in this direction.
* Diogo Fagundes he is studying for a master's degree in law and is studying philosophy at USP.
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