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Notes -
Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.
The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.
But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.
Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.
Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.
Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.
The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.
Say what you like about his policies but it's hard to deny Lula is exceptionally good at Politics, a bit like the Tory party here in the UK.
Why do you say that about the Tories? Genuinely interested -- though I'm also in the UK, I don't really have a feel for who's good at politics.
Off the top of my head, they did stay in power for a decade, which is definitely a feat. But they're also extremely unpopular (alongside Labour) right now, to the extent that Reform/Greens/other smaller parties are now a real threat to the Conservative/Labour paradigm. That kind of outcome doesn't seem like a party that's "good at politics", but maybe you have something more specific in mind.
I have no strong opinions here, I'd just be curious to hear your take.
The tories are considered one of the world's most successful political parties since they were founded in the 1800s, they are very good at adapting to changes and coming back and winning, see this article from the Economist a few years ago: https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/12/21/britains-tories-are-the-worlds-most-successful-party-heres-why
And even now, when it looked like Reform were going to eat the tories' lunch, they've somehow managed to get themselves back into 2nd place and if the UK's next government is right wing at the very least it's looking like they'll be the main player in it.
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