Lula da Silva (PT, left) will face an opposition majority in the National Congress if he wins in the second round of the Brazilian presidential elections, Dmitri Razumovski, director of the Latin American Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, assured Sputnik.
“If he were to win hypothetically, he would always be facing the opposition of parliamentarians to the government’s decisions. That is, they would block them. It would be a very hostile environment for da Silva,” he said.
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The Liberal Party (PL, right), to which the current Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, joined in 2021, obtained the majority of representatives in the National Congress of Brazil: 13 of the 81 seats in the Federal Senate and 99 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.
Meanwhile, the party led by da Silva, the Workers’ Party (PT), won nine seats in the Federal Senate and 80 in the Chamber of Deputies.
Adding to other left and center-left parties, Lula would have the support of 108 deputies. In contrast, Bolsonaro would have 187, since it would include the 47 from the Progressive party —of the current president of the Lower House, his ally Arthur Lira— and the 41 from Republicans.
Therefore, the PL and other parties with a conservative ideology could add enough votes to control the government’s decisions.
At the same time, da Silva “would have much fewer opportunities to form a coalition of the left,” explained Razumovski.
“For Bolsonaro, the situation in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate is now more than favorable. It’s about absolutely minimizing the risk of a motion of no confidence or censure: previously, his coalition blocked almost a hundred attempts at impeachment. Now we can say that this risk no longer exists,” he said.
Likewise, Razumovski reported that both Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, who will compete for the presidency of Brazil on Oct. 30, will try to play on the opponent’s ground to win more votes in the second round of the elections.
“Da Silva will likely bet on winning over a part of the middle class and, perhaps, of the industrialists, while Bolsonaro tries to play in the former president’s field, that is, with the poorest segment of the population in the northeast of the country and the Amazon,” Razumovski said.
The expert recalled that both candidates had already applied the same strategy before the first round, held on Oct. 2.
“Da Silva even said in an interview that it was not correct to classify him only as a politician from the left, while Bolsonaro tried to attract the typical Lula electorate with the help of social programs,” he commented.
The presidential candidates will also fight for the support of those who voted for Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomes, who came in third and fourth place with 4.2% and 3% of the vote, respectively: this is more than 8.5 million votes that “will be decisive”.
Both have already expressed their intention to support the leftist.
Another group of great importance for the candidates are the undecided, which, according to the polls, constitutes 10%.
Trying to attract these two groups would be “the only correct strategy,” said the analyst, who also did not exclude that both political sides resort to using negative campaigns to undermine the adversary’s reputation.
As for the possible results of the ballot, Razumovski was against placing too much trust in the polls and recalled that according to the polls, Bolsonaro would not manage to exceed 40% in the first round, a forecast quite far from reality.
Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, who held the presidency of Brazil for two consecutive terms (2003-2011), prevailed on Oct. 2 in the first round of the presidential elections, with 48.4% of the votes, while that the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, ranked second with 43.2%.
The second round will take place on Oct. 30, and the winner will assume a new four-year term on Jan. 1, 2023.